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4 




THE DAYS OF LENT 


SELECTED READINGS 


V 4 -' 

FROM TIIE WRITINGS OF THE 

RT. REV. F. D? HUNTINGTON, D.D. 

*» 

Late Bishop of Central New York 


By W. M. L. Jay 

W } VWvfo . 


WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
BY 

James O. S. Huntington, O.H.C. 



NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

31 West Twenty-third Street 

1906 




LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

FEB 13 1906 



Copyright 

E. P. Dutton & Co. 

1906 

Published February 1906 


The Plimpton Press Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 





INTRODUCTION 


Among those into whose hands this book will 
come, a number will feel that, for them, it requires 
no introduction. They have, in former days, 
found spiritual instruction and encouragement in 
“Helps to a Holy Lent,” “New Helps to a Holy 
Lent,” and “Forty Days with the Master,” as well 
as in other writings of the late Bishop of Central 
New York. They will recognize at once, in the 
present volume, his thought and utterance/ 

There will be others to whom a few words 
concerning the author of these pages, and the 
compilation itself, may be of service. 

Frederic Dan Huntington was born , in a New 
England homestead, in the year 1819. He grew 
up in a religious atmosphere, the dominant char¬ 
acter of which was a hard and unlovely Calvinism. 
From the full effects of this system, “Augustinian 
predestination acidulated with Genevan fatalism,” 
as he himself described it, he was saved by the 
deep devotion and courageous piety of his mother. 
The sight of her sufferings, from an ecclesiastical 
iii 


iv 


INTRODUCTION 


inquisition and condemnation, wrought in him, 
as a boy, an intense repugnance to the New Eng¬ 
land orthodoxy, and, in early manhood, be became 
an enthusiastic Unitarian, and entered the min¬ 
istry of that denomination. After a few years of 
much pastoral activity and effective preaching 
of the tenderer aspects of divine love, the reading 
of his mother’s journal, which came into his 
hands at her death, awakened him to a sense of 
the incompleteness of his own position. He said 
to a friend, “My mother had something in her 
religion that I do not find in my own.” What 
that was, it cannot be doubted, was a clear sense 
of the malignity of sin, and of the need of Re¬ 
demption, and the full provision for human res¬ 
toration in the Incarnation of the Eternal Son of 
God, His headship of the human race, and His 
victorious Passion, Death, and Resurrection, not 
as a Substitute for whose sake the sins of men 
could be condoned, but as a Saviour in whom 
man could be set free from sin and attain to 
personal righteousness and holiness, and perfect 
union with God. 

Ceasing to be a Unitarian, Dr. Huntington 
went on to recognize the existence in the world 
of a divine Kingdom, the very Body of Christ, 
universal and Catholic, as standing in the Name, 


INTRODUCTION 


v 


and living by the Spirit, of Him who is Son of 
God and Son of Man. It was natural to him, on 
reaching this final conviction, to lose no time in 
submitting to the authority of the Church, and 
seeking admission to the Apostolic priesthood. 

As has been implied, this change of outward 
relation was accompanied by a growth and de¬ 
velopment of spiritual consciousness. And he 
was able, through many years of his life as priest 
and bishop in the Church, to meet the religious 
difficulties of numbers of earnest and sincere per¬ 
sons, to point souls to the ways of deeper conse¬ 
cration, to guide them onward in the knowledge 
of God, revealed in Jesus Christ, and to intensify 
their loyalty to Him. 

It has been felt that his words, arranged in this 
volume by an experienced and gifted hand, have 
a message to many hearts that he would have been 
glad to deliver, that he must even now be anxious 
to impart. Though I have had no opportunity 
to examine these pages, I feel that it is not filial 
affection only that inspires the prayer that this 
book may find its way into the quiet places of many 


lives in this coming Lent. 

James O. S. Huntington, 


Holy Cross, West Park, 
February, 1906. 


Superior OJI.C. 








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% 4 



















THE DAYS OF LENT 


3sb=IiHctmestiar> 

I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before 
me. — Ps., li., 3. 

The fifty-first Psalm is the Ash-Wednesday 
cry of the guilty conscience of the ages. Every 
guilty conscience, sooner or later, takes it up and 
finds it the wonderful and inexhaustible expres¬ 
sion of its own wretchedness, its confession and 
final hope. 

At first it might appear that the two parts of 
the text were a repetition; but a closer examina¬ 
tion discovers a striking and instructive distinc¬ 
tion between them. The “transgressions” are 
not the same thing with the “sin.” To trans¬ 
gress is to step over, to go beyond, a certain fixed 
line. We transgress when we go, in whatever 
direction, with our feet or our thoughts, with our 
hands, or desires, or tongue, or temper, beyond 
the line of right. A very little motion, one way 
or the other, will bring us up against this neces- 


2 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


sary restriction. We are constantly stumbling 
against our limits. Tossed this way and that 
by unholy ambitions, — avarice on one side and 
parsimony on the other, over-much worldly 
business on one side and indolence on the other, — 
we are liable to continual transgressions, and 
are punished for them. A regenerate heart, 
loving only goodness, longing only for purity, 
following only Christ, — this is the only real 
liberty. Without this, the prohibitions perpetu¬ 
ally torment us. The Bible reads like an inter¬ 
minable threat. The commandments gird us in 
with awful severity. “The strength of sin is 
the law.” So in the painful and miserable alter¬ 
nation — from doing wrong to suffering for it, 
from overpassing the line to paying the penalty 
of fear and remorse, from offence to retribution — 
we fill out the wretched experience of the trans¬ 
gressor, and find that his “way is hard.” Any¬ 
thing, then, like these forty days of Lent, which 
imposes voluntary self-denials, masters natural 
appetite, mortifies pride, keeps the body under, 
or lifts the soul into a heavenlier air, — anything 
that leads us up and away from that picket¬ 
line of prohibitions, liberates us. We taste the 
glorious freedom of the sons of God. “If the 
Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” 


ASH-WEDNESDAY 


3 


Let us turn to the other clause: “And my sin 
is ever before me.” The Greek word, commonly 
used in the New Testament where our translation 
says “sin,” signifies a coming short, something 
radically wanting, the failure of a design. Trans¬ 
gression is breaking over the line of positive com¬ 
mandments; it is going too far, going beyond 
duty and law. But we are by no means sure of 
safety, the Gospel says, by merely avoiding this. 
We are made to love and serve and honor Christ, 
and to glorify Him forever. What if we fail of 
that? That is sin. We are made to live in a 
state of earnest, active, vital union with the 
Saviour’s living body of the Church, keeping His 
ordinances of prayer and sacrament. What if we 
fail of that ? That is sin. We are made to bring 
forth daily the sweet and gracious fruits of our 
faith in charitable services to men, in our house¬ 
holds, among our neighbors, the poor, the suffer¬ 
ing, the ignorant all round us. If we fail of that, 
it is sin. We do not escape sin by merely observ¬ 
ing the prohibitions of the law, or by not doing 
the things of which God says: “Thou shalt not” 
do them. 

Let us carry the subject one step farther for¬ 
ward. Not only is there a real distinction be¬ 
tween the transgressions and the sin, but the sin 


4 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


sustains to the transgressions the relation of a 
mother to her offspring. There must be, down 
somewhere under the surface, one great root — a 
bad principle, a bad spirit, one power of evil, 
clinging, working, active, in your heart — giving 
birth to all forms of evil, just according to your 
temperament, your weakness, your mood, the 
exposed side where Satan knows how to tempt 
you and bring the mischief out. Now, that in¬ 
ward state, that parent-source of special evils, — 
that is sin; the others are transgressions. 

The Scriptures are very careful to fix attention 
on this difference. The apostle Paul dwells 
always on “the evil heart of unbelief.” The 
Saviour Himself distinguishes the two when He 
says, “A corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.” 
“Make the tree good, and the fruit will be good.” 

But, after all, nothing permanent, nothing 
decisive, nothing that ensures salvation, is done 
till one makes confession of the great alienation 
of his heart from the holy God above him. This 
is the emphatic thought of the text. Be it special 
transgressions coming out, or be it that deep- 
struck sin of the heart from which they spring, 
the guilty but repentant David sees that he can¬ 
not be right with the God he has offended till he 
owns them both: “I acknowledge my transgres- 


ASH-WEDNESDAY 


5 


sions, and my sin is ever before me.” Confess 
often with the congregation; the opportunity is 
now opening for you to do it, day by day, for 
forty days of humiliation. Confess oftener and 
with more particular and personal specification 
in your closet, where no human eye or ear can 
come between you and your Judge. Examine 
yourself, what manner of person you are in your 
family, in your daily employment, in society, in 
the sanctuary, in view of eternity. Not only 
couple confession with self-examination, but self- 
examination with prayer, and prayer with self- 
denial, and self-denial with inward charity, and 
inward charity with larger offerings on God’s 
altar, unloosing heavy burdens and dealing 
bread to the hungry. So shall you keep a fast 
which God hath chosen, and you shall be His 
chosen, and your light shall break forth as the 
morning. 

Above all, remember what each heart would 
be, under the load of all this acknowledged trans¬ 
gression and sin, but for Him who shed His 
precious blood for the cleansing of all sin. And 
so be preparing, with a true penitent heart and a 
lively faith, to celebrate both the day of His 
Cross and Passion and the day of His Resurrec¬ 
tion, that you may be found risen with Him, your 


6 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


affections fixed on things above, where He ever 
liveth to make intercession with the Father. 

My God, my God, have mercy on my sin, 

For it is great; and if I should begin 
To tell it all, the day would be too small 
To tell it in. 

My God, Thou wilt have mercy on my sin, 

For Thy love’s sake; yea, if I should begin 
To tell this all, the day were far too small 
To tell it in! 

Receive my confession, O my only Hope of salvation, my 
Lord and my God. Thou who justifiest the sinner, and quicken - 
est the dead, justify me and revive me. Vouchsafe me pardon 
for past evil, amendment for present evil, and be my ever ready 
Help against evil to come. Forget my sins and remember Thy 
mercies. Cast me not away, but receive me according to Thy 
word, that I may live and not be disappointed of my hope. 
For my hope is in no works of mine, but hangs simply on the 
boundlessness of Thy love, and confides only in the multitude 
of Thy mercies. Help me, pity me, O Lord most holy, O God 
most mighty, and deliver me from evil: For Christ’s dear sake. 
Amen. 


Cimrstrap after 30 b=®QeDnesDap 

Jesus saith unto him: If I will that he tarry till I come, what 
is that to thee? Follow thou me. — St. John, xxi., 22. 

What is the true sense of that “ Follow thou 
me,” which, with slight variations, Christ so often 
repeats in His personal ministry to men? If 
we take His own teaching, the teaching of His 
mouth, the teaching of His actions, and the 
teaching of His sacrifice, there can be but one 
answer. It is such a choice of Him as admits 
of no hesitation and no division of the mind as 
to who shall have the first affection, the first 
honor, the first service, in all places. And it is 
such a going after Him as will admit of no delay, 
no competition, no excuses of self-indulgence, 
secular business, or domestic comfort. “What 
is that to thee? Follow thou me.” 

With some minds nowadays, as it was with 
St. Peter, the things which prevent their so fol¬ 
lowing are curiosity about some point of obscure 
and unpractical knowledge, or subordinate and 
unessential articles of human opinion, the im- 
7 


8 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


penetrable mysteries of Providence, the recreant 
will refusing to do the one plain duty it is directed 
to do, till this speculative curiosity is satisfied. 
“What is that to thee?” 

More frequent and more fatal, however, than 
the sidewise wanderings of the mind are the 
evasions of the heart. Men ask themselves, 
when the narrow way of Christ looks not only 
narrow but rough: What will become of my 
comfort ? What will become of my pride ? What 
will become of all that scheme of daily provision 
for enjoyment, the zest of enterprise or luxury, 
the pleasant recurrence of indoor indulgence 
and outdoor recreation, if I am really to take up 
in earnest the business of a good soldier of Christ, 
and bear my cross consistently after Him? Tem¬ 
perament, as being either nervous or indolent, 
may turn itself into a tempter or an apologist. 
What is that to thee — to thee, bought with a 
price, redeemed by precious blood, set apart for 
a service to which this body and all its acces¬ 
sories are but as a flying speck of dust to the light 
of the everlasting life? Whether you belong in 
your temperament to the class of St. Peter, the 
representative of action, or to that of St. John, 
the type of contemplation, what matters it which 
you belong to? Each has his sphere and work. 


THURSDAY AFTER ASH-WEDNESDAY 


9 


God knew your constitution, its weakness, its 
sensibility, its capacity, when He called you to be 
a disciple. Are you following in earnest with 
all the strength you have? 

What is a Christian’s duty as to certain kinds 
of public entertainment, especially on the stage, 
which are questionable ? Men and women whose 
hearts lie close to the heart of Christ, having all 
their tastes and affections molded by His will 
and penetrated and flavored by His spirit of 
holiness, put the whole matter instantly and 
almost unconsciously as far from their thoughts 
as it is from their desire. They are separate 
from it by disrelish, touching not the unclean 
thing, gladly pledged to avoid even the appear¬ 
ance of evil. Those, on the other hand, who have 
no real principle at the root of their action, led 
chiefly by the senses, consulting only inclination, 
always eager to relax the stricter restraints of 
God’s law, go, of course. 

Between these two classes remains a third 
class with whom the question stands, in a measure, 
open; often perplexed and anxious for direction, 
hesitating as to what the law of Christ requires 
of them, not quite satisfied or at peace if, to 
gratify others, or from being over-persuaded, 
they yield; or, if they hold out in refusing, still a 


IO 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


little undecided whether they have been over- 
scrupulous or needlessly disobliging. It is just 
here that some positive word or influence from 
the Divine Guide may be of great service or great 
comfort. To every such faint questioning, parley¬ 
ing, self-excusing, Christ says: “Christian, what 
is that to thee? Follow thou me.” Go back 
to your plainly spoken Bible: “The friendship 
of the world is enmity with God.” “Come out 
from among them, and be ye separate, touch not 
the unclean thing.” “If any man love the world, 
the love of the Father is not in him.” “She 
that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.” 
Find out an application of these sentences for 
yourself — not mine or your neighbor’s — but 
your own, intelligent, honest, brave, no matter 
where it strikes or what it cuts off. It is not 
necessary to be censorious or bitter, or to become 
Pharisees. There is no need of any mutual 
judgments. But it is necessary to accept none 
but the highest standards for the conscience, and 
to keep ourselves unspotted if we can. 

It would be easy to try the same great holy 
rule of undivided fealty to Christ, in many other 
cases of conduct. One thing only is safe, is 
right, is needful: the clear, straight following in 
faith. The heart that says: What is all else, — all 


THURSDAY AFTER ASH-WEDNESDAY 


II 


other gain, all other delight, all other good, — 
what is it all to me compared with following my 
Lord and helping forward His kingdom ? — that 
heart will know itself, and will somehow be 
known and read of all men, to be Christ’s and 
to have a peace that the world never gave. 

We have entered upon a new season of peni¬ 
tential purification and spiritual grace. Let us 
make it a season of sacred and determined reso¬ 
lution for Christ; of a hearty turning unto Christ, 
of purer living, new watchfulness, and more con¬ 
scientious self-denial in Christ. The Lents that 
are left to us are not many. The ventures grow 
more uncertain. The great voyage is not far 
off. What you are, what you have done, what 
you give for God and His Church, is all you can 
take with you, or remember with peace. The 
blessings promised are more than eye hath seen 
or ear heard, or the heart of man conceived. 

O Christ, our All in each, our All in all! 

Thee wholly will I love, Thee wholly seek, 

Follow Thy foot-track, hearken for Thy call . . . 

O Christ, my All in all, my flesh is weak, 

A trembling, fawning tyrant unto me: 

Turn, look upon me, let me hear Thee speak! 

Then, though the billows of Thine utmost sea 

Swathe me, and darkness build around its wall, 


12 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


Yet will I rise — Thou lifting when I fall — 

And, if Thou hold me fast, yet cleave to Thee. 

O Lord God, who alone knowest our infirmities, have pity 
upon me, and mine, and all men. Weak we are, strengthen us; 
afraid, encourage us; rash, sober us; slothful, arouse us; igno¬ 
rant, instruct us; destitute, enrich us; lost, find us; dead, quicken 
us: that with the strength, courage, soberness, energy, knowl¬ 
edge, riches, place and life which Thou givest us, we may follow 
Thee henceforth and forever. Amen. 


JFriDap after 30 &=a 23 eDnesDap 

God be merciful to me a sinner. — St. Luke, xviii., 13. 


All our evil, in act, or word, or wish, or thought, 
is a direct wrong against the God of all goodness 
and purity. A wound is given to the infinite 
and loving Heart. “He that sinneth against 
me wrongeth his own soul”: but mark the 
first clause, — “sinneth against me.” Sin is a 
personal affront, whose bitter consequences only 
the forgiveness of God Himself can remove, and 
toward which, with the publican, we must implore 
Him to be merciful. Not “Nature be merciful,” 
nor “Laws of my constitution be merciful,’’ nor 
“I will be merciful to myself,” but “God be 
merciful”; nor yet “God be merciful to sin in 
general,” but “to me a sinner.” 

We may try many plausible coverings and 
apologies; for the sophistry of sin is as old as 
pride. We may admit the offence, but plead 
the violence of the temptation, the treacherous 
opportunity, the necessities of business. The 
first man that sinned cried, “The woman tempted 
13 


14 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


me, and I did eat/’ and the tens of thousands of 
his descendants who sinned yesterday protested 
that they did not sin willingly. Yet all the while 
we know these to be poor, pitiful pretences, which 
never wholly satisfy the minds that make them. 
Deeper down, in some spot of your nature which 
the gracious Spirit has not permitted to be hard¬ 
ened and perverted utterly, is there not another 
verdict, a voice that is ready sometimes to cry, 
“ God be merciful to me a sinner ” ? 

So profoundly rooted is this religious instinct, 
— the feeling that any thorough and effectual 
religious life must be born through the pains of 
penitence, — that you will probably have heard 
some persons deploring their feeble sense of sin. 
Men under moral conviction at once lament that 
they are insensible to their bad state, and' yet 
show a lively sense of it in this very regret. They 
grieve because their grief is so small, and their 
condition contradicts itself. An apathy is on 
the soul; and till the subduing sight of the Cross 
unseals the fountains of holy emotion, there is 
self-accusation, but no peace. Repentance has 
stung the conscience, but has not reached, re¬ 
newed, and comforted the heart. 

Notice — and it seems to me a very striking 
fact — that while the Pharisee enumerates his 


FRIDAY AFTER ASH-WEDNESDAY 15 

merits, his abstinences and proprieties and alms¬ 
givings, the publican does not pretend to enu¬ 
merate his offenses. Now, goodness that can be 
counted and measured off is not enough. Good¬ 
ness is a principle, and that is measureless. Christ 
would show this publican as knowing that down 
underneath all particular sins there lies the one 
worse sin of a wrong soul, from which all the 
little ones spring, the parent sin of self-love that 
brings all the whole vile progeny forth. It is 
not so much sins as sin that we have to confess 
and deplore. A mere indifference to the right, a 
mere unfilial forgetfulness of God, the mere cold¬ 
ness of disregard to Christ’s compassion, make 
up that godless condition. The Father asks a 
filial spirit in His child; the Saviour asks a dis¬ 
ciple’s affection. “This is life eternal, to know 
Thee and Thy Christ.” “Thou shalt love thy 
God.” 

We all shrink from the Pharisaic reputation. 
Yet this must be true: if any of us are not peni¬ 
tent with the publican, the prodigal, the woman 
at the Redeemer’s feet; if any of us are going on 
with habitual self-satisfaction, with no burning 
uneasiness, no bitter self-accusations, no sad 
shame within; if the days pass over us and bring 
no feeling with them that we are far from where 


16 THE DAYS OF LENT 

we ought to be and might be, and far from what 
our Saviour has come to make us to be; we may 
be sure that, though we should lack effrontery 
to stand up and repeat the effrontery of the Phari¬ 
see, yet we are with him in spirit, and shall go 
on our usual rounds to-day no more justified than 
he. 

Finally, recall the truth that an irresistible 
Power, penetrating below our delusions, will 
bring all that is dark to light, and make every 
soul stand face to face with its sins. How rea¬ 
sonable that, seizing on all helps towards reckon¬ 
ing the departures of our transgressions, we should 
try to see what is the sin that most easily besets 
us! Plunge down into the darkest corners, not 
only among sins of the tongue and the street, 
of society and of business, of the house and the 
hand, of the market and the church, but among 
sins of forbidden desires, of subtile indulgence, 
of the temper and of the imagination, sins that 
ally themselves, if they can, with noble impulses 
and warm affections. This will be a worthy 
sacrifice, an acceptable Lenten service, such a 
Fast as God hath chosen. And it will be a new 
wonder, if, at the end of that solemn scrutiny, we 
do not all implore “God be merciful to me a 
sinner!” 


FRIDAY AFTER ASH-WEDNESDAY 17 

In the Castle of Despair, Christian found the 
key of promise in his bosom. And this is the 
promise: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful 
and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us 
from all unrighteousness,” “Who hath delivered 
us from the power of darkness, and hath trans¬ 
lated us into the kingdom of His dear Son, in 
whom we have redemption through His blood, 
even the forgiveness of sins.” 


Love, that caused us first to be, 
Love, that bled upon the tree, 
Love, that draws us lovingly, 

We beseech Thee, hear us. 

Sick, we come to Thee for cure, 
Guilty, seek Thy mercy sure, 
Evil, long to be made pure: 

We beseech Thee, hear us. 

Blind, we pray that we may see; 
Bound, we pray to be made free; 
Stained, We pray for sanctity: 
We beseech Thee, hear us. 

By the love that bids Thee spare; 
By the heaven Thou dost prepare, 
By Thy promises to prayer: 

We beseech Thee, hear us. 


O Lord my God, be not Thou far from me; haste Thee to 
help me. Have mercy upon me, and deliver me out of the 


i8 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


mire, that I may not stick fast therein, and may not remain 
utterly cast down for ever. Strengthen me with heavenly 
courage, lest the “old man,” the unruly flesh, not yet fully 
subject to the spirit, prevail and get the upper hand. Neither 
let the world and the brief glory thereof deceive me. Give me 
strength to resist, patience to endure, and constancy to per¬ 
severe. Grant to me above all things that I can desire, to de¬ 
sire to rest in Thee, and in Thee to have my heart at peace. 
Let thy mercy be upon me, as my trust is in Thee. Amen. 


%>aturDap aftet 9sf)=a^eDnesDap 

Arise ye, and depart; for this is not your rest. — Micah, ii., io. 


Unless it is the emptiest of sentimental excla¬ 
mations, the penitential prayer, “God be merci¬ 
ful to me a sinner,” will be followed by an arising 
and departing, with new-born affections, energies 
that are not of the flesh but the Spirit, from the 
old and far country for the Father’s house. 

This, in fact, is the test of the sincerity of faith, 
— the willingness to give up all that has been 
precious but not holy, and launch out upon the 
future, trusting only to the unseen Hand, like 
the Patriarch of whom that beautiful thing is 
written, that when he was called to go out into 
a place which he should after receive, he obeyed 
and went out, not knowing whither he went, 
dwelling in the land of promise, and looking for 
a city which hath foundations, whose builder 
and maker is God. Great difficulties will threaten 
every such obedient foot, — the wilderness before, 
the bondage to evil behind; but God is mightier 
than they, a pillar of fire for the night and of 
19 


20 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


bright cloud by day: “ Greater is He that is for us 
than they that are against us.” 

No period of our life becomes quite intelligible 
and clear to us till we quit it for the next; not 
childhood till we have left it; not youth till it 
has departed; not life itself as a whole, till it verges 
to its close. There is certainly truth here; and 
there is a much larger and more sacred truth 
connected with it. Retrospect is not all outlook. 

Our best wisdom is not gained from what is 
behind us, but from what is above. The de¬ 
ficiencies of knowledge find at once a cause and 
a compensation in the immeasurable certainties 
of faith. “I know,” said the Apostle, “in whom 
I have believed.” Our great want is to look up 
with just that assurance. For that we have to 
be moved and dislodged. For that we have to 
change our state, our mind, our heart. As there 
are arms to take up the reluctant child and carry 
him along, so God lifts us along. We are born 
that we may be born again. We live that we 
may have life everlasting. 

When the heart is really made new, and is 
filled with the holy life of its Lord, it matters 
not what the outward place or scenery may be. 
There is no restless thirst for novelty, no con¬ 
tempt or complaint of commonplace task-work. 


SATURDAY AFTER ASH-WEDNESDAY 


21 


Even in the new country, the old and familiar 
has to be taken back. There is much in com¬ 
mon in the forms of the old life and the forms 
of the new. The same people have to be met, 
and served, and endured. The same body has 
to be fed, clothed, exercised, kept under. The 
same crosses of temper, self-disgust, baffled 
aspiration, have to be borne. No emigration 
transports us out of the reach of mortal annoy¬ 
ance and infirmity. If the old duties look small, 
the old labors irksome, it is probably a sign that 
the “new heart” is not really in us, but only 
some vain and specious imagination instead. 
After His high communion in the temple, Jesus, 
the Lord of souls, went back to Nazareth, con¬ 
tent with the companionships of His childhood, for 
eighteen years more, cheerful with a village repu¬ 
tation, and was “subject” to Joseph and Mary. 

For all this that we have said, there is a state¬ 
ment far more strong and complete, of simpler 
speech and sublimer authority, in the Gospel 
of the New Testament. There you may find 
again and again, repeated in as many .forms as 
the heart and customs of men could need it, 
from the lips of the Redeemer and His first dis¬ 
ciples: “ Except a man be born again, he can¬ 
not see the Kingdom of God.” There you find 


22 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


that to “arise” there must be repentance toward 
God and faith in Jesus Christ, since “it is God 
that worketh in us, both to will and to do.” 
There you see revealed what is to be departed 
from, — “the evil heart of unbelief,” “the old 
man and his deeds” “corrupt according to the 
deceitful lusts.” And there you behold the “rest” 
that is not here, but remaining “for the people 
of God,” the peace that is given “not as the 
world gives.” 

And then all that is earthly can be freely sacri¬ 
ficed for this life divine. When we go out from 
one resting place after another, it may feel at 
first as if it were an exile from joy. But as the 
old roof drops away, the Almighty arms will 
close us round; and lo! another house, not built 
with hands, begins already to reveal its spiritual 
symmetry, its fairer form and eternal strength, 
around us. Though father and mother forsake 
us, the Lord will take us up. 

If you are disheartened at your trivial fruits 
and slow advances, you will remember that even 
the great saints and prophets who have done 
most, have been conscious of leaving the vast 
work of good unfinished; dying, one after another, 
“without the sight” of their desired achieve¬ 
ment, still declaring that they “seek a country.” 


SATURDAY AFTER ASH-WEDNESDAY 23 


Then our own death itself is no more terrible. 
We cease gazing backward to the Eden behind, 
but look steadily into the heaven above. We 
lose sight of the earthly gardens of ease and 
pleasure from which our infirmity expelled us, 
in expecting the immortality to which we are 
called. Forgetting the things that are behind, 
we reach forth to those that are before; willing 
to “arise” and “depart,” that we may be found 
risen indeed into newness of life. 

We heed the Voice that bids us “Rise!” 

We take the Hand that leads us forth: 

What matter if to South or North 
We fare through dark or sunny skies, — 

Through fields with summer blossoms drest, 

Or white and chill with winter snows? 

Little it boots what path he goes, 

Who by it enters into rest, — 

The rest of trust in God’s dear Will, 

The trust that keeps an even keel 
In flood or storm or thunder-peal, 

Awaiting Christ’s calm “Peace, be still.” 

Show me, O Lord, the way that I should walk in; for I lift 
up my soul to Thee. 

Teach me to go the way that pleaseth Thee; for Thou art 
my God and my Guide. 

Lead me forth into the land of righteousness, and along 
the ways of peace and concord; 

And let me ever walk in this life on earth, as having good 
hope of the life everlasting. Amen. 


mm ^unDap in Lent 

Lead us not into temptation. — St. Matt., vi., 13. 

We have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the 
feeling of our infirmities. — Heb., iv., 15. 

In two states of mind we pray with all our 
might: “Lead us not into temptation.” One 
is when we are brought close to a known sin by 
a favorable opportunity or by some strong pas¬ 
sion; when we feel the power of the temptation, 
and doubt whether our own strength will hold 
us back. There are circumstances which make 
it particularly hard to put the tempter behind us. 
Perhaps it is an amiable wish to please another 
person, or a recollection that we have gone as 
near the forbidden thing before and have escaped, 
or a feeling that we are driven on by a kind of 
destiny like the current of a stream. Then, if 
there is a moment’s awakening of conscience, 
or a flash of light from heaven on the edge of the 
gulf, we cry in earnest: “Lead me not into temp¬ 
tation! Deliver me; save me; O Almighty God!” 

The second experience comes later. The sin 

24 


FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT 


25 


has been committed. You did not pray for 
deliverance in season; or you did not put your 
will-power along with your prayer; or it was 
only the punishment — the bad name of the 
wrong thing — that you wanted to escape, not 
the iniquity of it or its disobedience to God. 
Now comes repentance with its shame, or remorse 
with its fire. You are not hardened yet or des¬ 
perate. There may be forgiveness. There is a 
Saviour and a Cross. There is also the future 
with all its fearful possibilities, and you must 
meet it. You pray again: “Lead me not here¬ 
after into temptation.” 

The petition, being spoken to God, needs to 
be cleared of a difficulty. God, whether prayed 
to or not, could never lead a child of His into 
needless exposure to wrong-doing. If reason 
did not tell us this, His own word tells us: “Let 
no man say, when he is tempted: I am tempted 
of God; for God cannot be tempted of evil, 
neither tempteth He any man; but every man is 
tempted, when he is drawn away of his own 
lust.” 

What then is it that God’s child prays God 
not to lead him into? “Lead me not into that 
half-hidden, safe-looking road where sin lodges, 
lights its lamps, and throws its mask away. Save 


26 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


me from places, occasions, invitations angelic 
in appearance, infernal within. Save me from 
myself, for I am frail! Save me from going where 
the enemy will be too strong for me!” 

We think first, perhaps, of the sins of the senses, 
because they stand first in the order of the temp¬ 
tation of the Son of man, as told in the Gospel 
for to-day; because the type of bodily supply, 
“daily bread,” has just before been mentioned; 
because the Church order, at the beginning of 
Lent, warns us especially against fleshly indul¬ 
gence; and because, among the three parts of us, 
the flesh is always on hand, wilful and obtrusive. 
But in fact the law of sin is alike in the intel¬ 
lectual part of us, — in ambition, self-idolatry, 
emulation, wrath, revenge, envying, as in the 
other parts. Our Lord made this petition, there¬ 
fore, a part of that universal prayer, short but 
comprehensive, which was never to cease in the 
secret and social worship of His disciples, just 
as we ask for daily bread, or for the constant 
coming of His kingdom. 

It must be, therefore, that we are to look for 
very frequent and common applications of its 
warning. There must be something in it which 
has to do with the whole ordinary work of our 
life; whenever our principles are tried, when 


FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT 


27 


character is to be built, and right has to fight its 
endless warfare with wrong. 

The meaning is this: To keep out of sin, we 
must keep out of the road that leads to sin. The 
way of moral safety never runs close to the brink 
of iniquity. Virtue does not build a house for 
itself and its children next door to profligacy. A 
man’s disposition towards righteousness can be 
judged by the distance which he puts between 
himself and wickedness. In the world of right 
and wrong, even more than in social circles, 
people can be rated by their neighborhood. 
Vice gets its victims, for the most part, on the 
border-land. Most men and women go wrong 
without deliberately meaning to go wrong; they 
make their surrender on the disputed territory 
where they have consented to be found. Strong 
characters, like great generals, show their strength 
by taking strong positions. 

Every little while Society is surprised at the 
sudden downfall of one of its trusted and admired 
leaders. The surprise comes of a superficial 
acquaintance with the fixed laws of moral life. 
The fraud, the forgery, the adultery, the mur¬ 
derous blow, was not the swift plunge downward 
of a steady and firmly guarded soul, as it seemed 
to be. It was simply the working-out of a poison 


28 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


that had been working in — nobody knows how 
long. In character you cannot keep one division 
sound while another is rotten. Character is one 
thing, a living unit growing from a single root, 
and the sweetness or the bitterness of it runs out 
of sight into every branch of the tree. 

Friends, we, in Christ and the Church, are 
called to stand on high places, and to live as we 
worship. The “Man of Nazareth” was “with¬ 
out sin,” not because He was less human than we 
are, but because, though “tempted like as we are,” 
He went not near enough to the forbidden thing 
to let it ensnare Him, or unsettle Him, or triumph 
over Him. We see there the secret of His instan¬ 
taneous and final victory: “Get thee behind me, 
Satan!” 

From that holy height He speaks down to us. 
He breaks the bread of His body; He pours the 
blood of His veins, and it cleanses all sins that 
are repented of and confessed. He nourishes 
the fainting spirit; He confirms the hesitating 
will; He guides the stumbling feet. He sheds 
abroad through all His Church the gifts of His 
grace for every open heart. By all these heavenly 
helps He invites us, He urges, He pleads, He 
encourages us: “Come higher up into the liberty 
that breaks the tempter’s chain; into the glory 


FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT 


29 


of my light; into the peace of my Communion; 
into the joy of my endless life.” 

Entering by this Living Way into the spirit 
of His service, we can have no manner of doubt 
as to the meaning of this petition of our Lord’s 
prayer. If you are doing things, or desiring 
things, or thinking of things, every day in a way 
that leads straight on to some transgression, you 
need not be astonished any day or night to hear 
God’s call to the first offender: “Where art thou ?” 
If any spot on earth, by any wayside, has in it a 
fatal fascination for any of your senses or your 
tastes, you will turn from it as from the plague. 
You will keep close to the secret place and altar 
of the Most High, where are the sure support and 
salvation of a living faith. 

Salvation is only another name for safety. 
Safety is only in character. Character is in 
strong principles, great affections, and high habits; 
and these are righteousness, and righteousness 
is by faith, and faith overcometh the world. 

“ Tempted and tried!” 

Whate’er may betide, 

In His secret pavilion His children shall hide. 

’Neath the shadowing wing 
Of eternity’s King 

His children shall trust and His servants shall sing. 


3 ° 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


“Tempted and tried!” 

Yet the Lord shall abide 
Thy faithful Redeemer, thy Keeper and Guide, 

Thy Shield and thy Sword, 

Thy exceeding Reward; 

Then enough for the servant to be as his Lord. 

O Heavenly Father, who hast pity upon all Thy children, 
who knowest whereof we are made, and that without Thee 
we are unable to please Thee; make Thy strength perfect in 
our weakness, that we may be able to resist every temptation 
and to flee from every appearance of evil with promptitude and 
thoroughness; to the glory of Thy Name, and the encourage¬ 
ment of our own souls: Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 


9§onDap after tfce JFfrst ^unDap 

Ye see your calling. — i Cor., i., 26. 


The word “calling,” applied to a human life 
in the Christian sense, means the great primary 
truth of religion, — that our erring will is gov¬ 
erned by a Will above it, and is capable of receiv¬ 
ing influences from the Spirit of God. A living 
faith not only justifies that view, but requires it. 
If there is a “calling,” there is One who calls, 
and who when calling has a right to be heard. 
It follows that there is one object in existence 
so preeminent that to accomplish that is to fulfil 
the great purpose of our being, and to fail of that 
is to miss the chief end. It is only idlers, too 
frivolous to think, who conceive of their life as 
without a plan, and have never heard the call of 
the Master: “Go, work in my vineyard.” 

So true is this that it has been observed of the 
most efficient and commanding men in the history 
of the world, that they were apt to represent them¬ 
selves as led on by some power beyond themselves; 
instigated, possessed, or inspired by a strange 
31 


3 2 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


force above their control, — a demon, a genius, 
a destiny, or a deity. But the Apostle Paul 
refers to something higher and holier than any 
dreamy sentiment like this. Standing on the 
verities of the Gospel, speaking, observe, to those 
who have heard it and nominally assented to it, 
he summons them to a more solemn and search¬ 
ing sense of what it requires: “ Ye see your calling, 
brethren.” The truth is clear; you see it. It is 
not of men, but of God, who calls. Christ has 
lived, and He asks living followers. He has died, 
a sacrifice, and He asks the spirit of self-sacrifice, 
the death of evil, in you. He has risen, living ever¬ 
more; and whatsoever gift of His love ye shall 
ask, believing, ye shall receive. These are your 
guaranties, your commission, your grounds of 
action. This is your calling. It is not our life 
in general, every kind of life, that is your calling. 
It is the life of a disciple of Christ, penetrated 
in every part by his spirit, warmed by His zeal, 
baptized into His pure blood, sanctified by His 
indwelling presence, purged of dead works and 
a servile obedience by His quickening grace, 
“hid” with Him and so “made manifest” and 
“glorified with Him.” 

It follows that the business of a Christian life 
is something special and distinctive, a “calling” 


MONDAY AFTER THE FIRST SUNDAY 33 

by itself. Paul speaks as if no pursuit were to 
be thought of in comparison with it. It is the 
errand on which we are all sent into the world, — 
to gain the character, to live the life that will be 
nearest to God here, and will be immortal by its 
secret fellowship with Him who is its resurrection 
— Life of Life. 

This idea of a “calling” individualizes not 
only the Christian obligation, but the Christian 
person. “Ye see the calling,” St. Paul says, 
and it is your calling. This language is personal. 
It is addressed to individual men and women. 
It says: “Unto you I call, soul by soul. The 
vocation is an individual matter. Ye see it, 
each for himself. There is no impersonal char¬ 
acter, no pardon by proxy, no collective salva¬ 
tion. ‘Repent’ is for each. ‘Thou shalt love 
the Lord thy God’ is for each. ‘Take up the 
cross and come after me’ is for each. Ye see 
your calling.” 

Nor is the Christian calling the less universal 
and impartial for the reason that it is special, 
requiring a personal consecration. On the con¬ 
trary, its specialty is the very ground of its uni¬ 
versality. The more definite and the more 
searching you make the Christian command to 
be, the more will the principles of its righteous- 


34 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


ness send their presence into every department of 
life, and the spirit of its charity diffuses its fra¬ 
grance into every nook and corner of the house¬ 
hold of humanity. 

Ye see your calling, families. On every domes¬ 
tic sanctuary — its sympathies, its cares, its wear 
and waste of sensibility, its wealth of joy and love, 
tenderness, pity, and tears — Christ lays the law 
of a consecrated and holy economy. . . . There 
is a cause of Christian earnestness to be carried 
forward; a work of Christian training to be done; 
a privilege of Christian comfort and sympathy 
and mutual help to be diffused by self-denial, 
watchfulness, and prayer. ... Set thy house in 
order, for earthly tabernacles are to be dissolved. 
And while they last, they take in no calm, abid¬ 
ing light, save through invisible windows that 
open upward into the unshadowed and undivided 
heaven. 

And ye see your calling, men and women of 
action. You have a field not surpassed for 
Christian opportunity; powers that never will 
be freer nor less compromised with the usages of 
evil; standards of public opinion that are in your 
own hands, to be nobly molded by you if the good 
will stand together, or for you to be ignobly molded 
by if you are servile; temptations to be overcome; 


MONDAY AFTER THE FIRST SUNDAY 35 


prizes to be won. You have a Church of Christ 
inviting you and offering you its gracious aids 
and benedictions. However sin may have spoilt 
the past, do not despair. If you sit weeping 
with Mary by the sepulcher of some buried joy, 
a voice may yet break on your grief: “The Master 
is come, and calleth for thee.” If you are blind 
and weak with Bartimeus, the animating news 
may yet lift you to your feet: “Rise! He calleth 
thee.” 

If we both see and follow this calling of our 
Lord, when He calls again, and calls “His own 
by name,” it will be to glory and honor and 
immortality. 

O Jesus Christ, I am very blind; 

Nothing comes through into my mind; 

’Tis well I am not dumb: 

Although I see Thee not, nor hear, 

I cry because Thou may’st be near: 

O Son of Mary, come! 

I hear it through the all-things blind: 

Is it Thy voice so gentle and kind, — 

“Poor eyes! no more be dim”? 

A hand is laid upon my eyes; 

I hear and hearken, see and rise; 

’Tis He! I follow Him. 

Open mine eyes, O Lord, to the seriousness and the value 
of life. Give me an honest calling, by which to take my right- 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


36 

ful place in the good activities of this life; yet which shall never 
close my eyes or ears to any calling of Thine. Give me grace 
to remember always that I am made by and for Thee, and am 
to use all things that Thou givest me to prepare for Thy final 
coming and call to me, that I may enter with joy and gratitude 
into Thy heavenly kingdom. For Thy Mercy’s sake. Amen. 


CuesOap after tfte Jfitst ©unDap 

So will I sing praise unto thy Name forever, that I may daily 
perform my vows. — Ps., lxi., 8. 

It is very easy to make vows, in Lent or out of 
it, especially easy if we think lightly of what we 
say when we make them. It needs nothing but 
a breath, shaped into words on the tongue. In 
that case, too, it is easy to forget them and to 
break them. On the other hand, the more deeply 
and solemnly we feel what we are doing when 
we make religious promises, the surer we may 
be that they will cling to our remembrance, and 
the harder it will be for the Tempter to surprise 
or persuade us into a violation of them. To vow 
is the act of an instant. To pay our vows may 
be the grand labor of a lifetime. “Daily,” the 
Psalmist says. 

Honorable men, the world over, are agreed in 
requiring one another to keep their word. This 
habit of truth, this standing steadfastly by one’s 
deliberate pledge through good report and evil 
report, — this is the indispensable thing in char- 
37 


38 THE DAYS OF LENT 

acter. Where this is, there is a rock to rest 
upon. 

And what the best part of human nature thus 
applauds, the Bible explicitly requires. The 
different books were written by men inspired 
for that purpose, at intervals reaching over fourteen 
or fifteen hundred years; but the duty of paying 
our vows is mentioned in all of them. It is 
recorded of Abraham, Jacob, and Moses, of great 
prophets, mighty warriors, and holy women, that 
they kept such vows. When the old Church 
expanded into the more perfect Church of the 
Saviour and His cross, two special vows were 
appointed to be taken by every disciple; at bap¬ 
tism through sponsors, and on approaching the 
Lord’s Supper by confirmation, in each one’s 
own person; and the keeping of these engage¬ 
ments, awful and yet blessed, is the work of a 
Christian, spread over his whole life, wherever 
he goes, whatever business he follows, and what¬ 
ever temptations he meets. 

In our original constitution is put the germ 
of a system of spiritual activities. It is the 
spiritual man. It is the image of God, His im¬ 
mortal child. But day by day the lower parts 
and passions are gaining on it. It is cramped 
by neglect and warped by sin. It is like the 


TUESDAY AFTER THE FIRST SUNDAY 39 

fishermen busy with their nets before the Master 
called them. He has many ways of calling. 
Suddenly He speaks. One of you He calls by a 
spoken word: “Repent”; “Believe”; “Follow 
me.” One of you He calls by a bitter disappoint¬ 
ment; another by an open grave. Sometimes it 
is an invitation: “Come unto me”; sometimes 
a warning: “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” 
Then this spiritual man starts forth, answers, and 
lives. He that was dead is alive. 

But alive for what? Only to say once, “I 
live,” and then to go and eat and drink, and get 
gain; to live for amusement; to be recklessly gay 
in company, and petulant in the household, and 
a worldling and an apostate everywhere? Or, 
rather, alive to grow in righteousness, to keep 
and “daily perform” his vows; to go on from 
excellence to loftier excellence, in a path that 
shines brighter and brighter with justice and 
charity and meekness and honor and courage 
and sacrifice, and all the beauty of holiness and 
all the majesty of faith, “unto the perfect day.” 

Mark, then, the difference between feeling 
and principle, or between beginning and progress. 
Feeling is fitful; principle is unchanging. Begin¬ 
nings, from their very nature as beginnings, are 
transient; progress is to be unceasing. Next 


40 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


after a personal renewal and confession, and a 
test to prove whether that is genuine or not, is a 
paying of these vows, a godly girding up of the 
spirit to constant watchfulness, a resolute asking 
each morning: “Lord, what new and harder 
duty wilt Thou have me to do to-day ?” Then 
a walking all the day on that heavenly road, 
lead whichever way it will. Then an honest con¬ 
fession every night: “How little, Lord, done for 
Thee!” So the fruit of the Spirit must ripen. 

The reward our Father often sends to His 
chosen ones is some harder task, some sharper 
pain, some bitterer crucifixion, some trying of 
their faith that shall lift them to higher honors 
hereafter. How plain that He values our strength 
more than our comfort, and would have us more 
anxious to finish our work like heroes than to 
count our wages like hirelings, or even to recite 
our raptures like visionaries! 

Christ always brought His followers to this 
test of constancy. How jealously He guarded 
them against faint-heartedness! He saw the 
peril of looking back. “Let the dead bury their 
dead; but go thou and preach the kingdom of 
God.” To the young man: “Go, sell all thou 
hast, and come and follow me.” Even to physi¬ 
cal infirmity: “Take up thy bed”; “Stretch forth 


TUESDAY AFTER THE FIRST SUNDAY 41 

thine hand”; “Go wash in the pool.” To the 
fishermen: “Launch out into the deep, and let 
down your nets for a draught.” 

Do something. Try your faith. Test your con¬ 
version. Do not merely wish and weep and talk, 
and try to feel, as if you could draw water from 
a dry well by heavier exercise at the bucket. Go 
straight to Christ’s service, and “as thy day so 
shall thy strength be.” Act openly in your 
Master’s name, and you will find yourself con¬ 
stantly loving Him more. “As ye have received 
Jesus, so walk ye in Him.” 

O constancy, constancy — a paying of the 
vow — that is everywhere the glory of a man! 
Paying the vow to Christ Jesus is the brighter 
glory of the Christian. 

When thou dost purpose aught (within thy power), 

Be sure to do it though it be but small; 

Constancy knits the bones, and makes us stour 
When wanton pleasures beckon us to thrall: 

Who breaks his own bond, forfeiteth himself: 

What nature made a ship, he makes a shelf. 

Almighty God, from whom all good things do come, grant 
that I may make only such vows and promises as are right; 
and also that I may have grace and power faithfully to per¬ 
form the same: Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 


&£3eDne;sDag after tfce JFirst ©unirap 

What is your life? — St. James, iv., 14. 

The question, as you know well, is not con¬ 
cerned with the outside of your life, — its place, 
or properties, or privileges, except so far as these 
help or hinder the making of Christian character. 
What is your life as to your own will-power, your 
free choice, your keeping it what it was meant 
to be and ought to be? As a mere bodily func¬ 
tion, the Apostle goes on to say, as a thing of 
breath and blood, it is as transient and uncertain 
as the vapor that “appeareth for a little time, 
and then vanisheth away.” Your true life, He 
tells you, has a grander meaning than that, a 
nobler purpose, a diviner guide and end. What, 
then, is your life? 

First, it is an obligation. It belongs to its 
Maker. Creatorship creates dominion on the 
one side, subjection on the other, — not a slavery, 
because freedom of choice is granted to every 
man, and because the Sovereignty is always seek¬ 
ing the subject-child’s good. Yet no boast of the 

42 


WEDNESDAY AFTER THE FIRST SUNDAY 43 

dignity of human nature lifts us out of our de¬ 
pendence; and dependence is debt, and debt is 
duty. Existence itself — life in its lowest physi¬ 
cal sense, that “vapor’’— has no guaranty any¬ 
where, for an hour. Obligation, therefore, is 
fundamental in the law of created life. Love — 
love working together with the Power, the Creator, 
only doubles the accountability. 

Life is also a trust; and higher than the mere 
keeping of a law is stewardship. In a steward¬ 
ship, honor adds to obligation the sense of loyalty, 
— loyalty to a high-hearted superior who thought 
so well and worthily of us as to commit things 
to us to be done. 

Both of these — obligation and stewardship — 
have an upward look, towards God. But out 
of that seat of Majesty on high, Jesus Christ 
came down and dwelt and toiled with men. “I 
am among you,” He said, “as one that serveth.” 
We are in a world made for work. Suffering, 
want, ignorance, injustice, all the misery of sin, 
cry aloud to us for help. Our life, then, is not 
only an obligation and a trust, it is a service. 
And as there are many kinds of hunger besides 
the hunger for bread — hunger for fair treatment, 
for kind judgment, for pity, for sympathy, for 
the accents of a human voice — so there are 


44 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


“ diversities of gifts.” Give of the gift given to 
you. As I went into the door of a restless sufferer, 
I met coming out an unordained messenger who 
had gone before me, a woman gifted with the 
special power and charm of song. She had 
taken her gift as a trust, and used it for service. 
For an hour she had ministered Christ as I did 
not know how to preach Him, quieting the sharp 
pain, composing the agitated nerves, leaving a 
benediction of peace. Set free from slavery to 
self, you taste the liberty of a filial service among 
the sons and daughters of God. 

With such freedom will come finally a sense of 
unconquerable power. What was first an obli¬ 
gation, then a trust, and then a service, becomes 
at last a victory. There enters into a life like 
that, no matter where it is lived, a note of far- 
reaching and abiding satisfaction. Keen critics 
in music say that the more perfect the harmony, 
the farther is the sound carried. When a Chris¬ 
tian life is fairly attuned, at its center, to the ruling 
will of God, one triumphant, accordant voice 
outvoices all the discord of passion, ambition, envy, 
lust, and fear. 

We have found out, then, what this strange, 
troubled, tempted life is for. When our Lord’s 
life was most tried and threatened, He said to 


WEDNESDAY AFTER THE FIRST SUNDAY 45 

His disciples: “My peace I give unto you,” — 
not because they understood the mystery, but 
because they had learned of Him the object, the 
meaning, the end of life. 

Surely every step you and I take forward in 
the Christian course ought to be quick and firm, 
confident and joyful. No matter what our every¬ 
day employment may be, hand-craft or brain- 
craft, art or drudgery, whenever this conviction 
comes into it — that you and God are doing it 
together — a new power is put in all the task. 
It is no longer dull routine or hopeless failure. 
Your business is more than an occupation, it is 
a “calling.” “Ye are laborers together with 
God,” is as the sounding of a trumpet. Obli¬ 
gation passes into stewardship; stewardship is 
enlarged into service; service rises into the victory 
that overcomes the world and disarms death. 

My life — what is it? Say, it is a debt: 

Then let me try to pay it honestly. 

Or say, it is a service: What is set 
For me to do, I would do faithfully. 

A battle, say: Then victory will be mine, 

If prayerfully I seek for help Divine. 

Debt, service, battle, — one and all are meant 
To show the path by which the Master went, 
That they who follow in His steps may stand 
Free, ransomed, victors, in the Deathless Land. 


46 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


O God, who hast set us our work to do in life, give us grace 
to do it in and for Thee. Grant that no temptation of this 
world may lead us to forget that to Thee we owe all that we 
are and have, and that Thee only we must serve in all things, 
and with all our hearts. For Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen. 


Cbut 0 Dap after tfte JFirst SunDap 

He entered into one of the ships, which was Simon’s, and 
... He said unto Simon: “Launch out into the deep, and let 
down your nets for a draught. And Simon answering said 
unto Him: “Master, we have toiled all the night, and have 
taken nothing: Nevertheless at Thy word I will let down the 
net. — St. Luke, v., 3, 4, 5. 

We see uncovered here a human heart like 
our own, and the working in it of the laws of the 
common spiritual life. It is a living picture 
of our dealing with Him who is the Master not 
only of ships and the sea, but of men, and also 
of His dealing with us; that is, it makes it plain 
to us how we, too, if we are at all in earnest in 
trying to live like Christians, can get the help 
that we all alike need. 

A fisherman is about the business of his calling 
one early morning in the little vessel on the lake. 
He was, like many of us, perhaps, disappointed 
and disheartened. He was having a taste of 
the bitter medicine of unsuccessful work: u We 
have toiled all night and have taken nothing.” 
Men and women, the strongest-hearted, have 
47 


4 8 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


some time or other had to say that, — fishing 
or trading or housekeeping, saving the lost, or 
trying to get the better of a bad habit in them¬ 
selves. 

Look, then, at your oriental brother’s very 
human thoughts, pursuing one another and con¬ 
tending within him. On the one side is the 
testimony of his business experience, what some 
people with great confidence call “ practical 
sense,” — excellent, undoubtedly, in its sphere, 
but failing us fearfully in pain, in sorrow, in 
doubt, in heart-breaking and in strong tempta¬ 
tion. This short-sightedness says: “What is the 
use in letting down and hauling up this empty 
net? We in this boat are sailors, we are fisher¬ 
men, we understand the business that we have 
been brought up to. What can this young 
carpenter from Nazareth tell us that we don’t 
know better than he? No; let the nets lie and 
dry.” 

Over against this oracle of the brain is another 
voice, speaking in behalf of another capacity in 
us, reaching up to another reality above us, — 
not knowledge, not business cleverness, not the 
world’s calculation: “Nevertheless at Thy word 
I will let down the net.” Somewhere down in 
the deeps of man’s heart, deeper than plummet 


THURSDAY AFTER THE FIRST SUNDAY 49 

ever sounded, is the sense of a Power not in land 
or water, not in recollection or foresight, not 
handed down in the traditions of any seafaring 
craft. It is twofold. Outside of him it is the 
Lord whom the winds and the sea obey, not less 
the Master of men for being the Son of man. 
Within him it is a faculty made to answer to that 
Christ, to see Him as He is, to hear Him when 
He speaks, to follow Him gladly when He calls. 
When that Son of man, coming up from the 
Forty Days’ Fast through which we are passing, 
says to the Tempter, “Man shall not live by bread 
alone,” by material supplies to his lower life, — 
then, because you have another hunger in you, 
and higher satisfactions, this deeper want in you 
answers: “That is true. I only half knew it 
before; I had forgotten it in my eager gettings 
and spendings; but now, your saying it, my 
Master, makes it real to me again. Let me launch 
out beyond my economical, financial, even my 
scientific soundings, on the boundless deep of 
unfathomed Wisdom and Love. I was not born 
for what I can hold in my hands and reckon by 
my arithmetic. Many and many a time I have 
groaned in agony with all these fine properties 
about me; I have toiled all night and taken 
nothing.” 


50 THE DAYS OF LENT 

Notice that the disciples’ night-long work is 
not discredited or scorned. This Nazareth work¬ 
man is not too high to value any honest handi¬ 
craft. Every human energy and talent, lent by 
Him, must be employed. When they have 
launched out into the deep, they will have to 
let down their nets again. The miracle will not 
be wrought as a bounty for idleness. Only 
remember, doing your best, that there are greater 
gains in store than all visible returns. To our 
Lord the Unseen was more than all the Seen; if 
we are like Him it will be more to us. 

One law of the soul’s life is that Action reacts, 
and strengthens character; and character is the 
end of religion. Simon was stronger immedi¬ 
ately for conquering his doubt and putting his 
hands to the net. So are we. Right doing, with 
a righteous will, enlarges the will-power. Not 
more certainly does conduct manifest manhood 
and womanhood than it builds it up. Good 
Christians have asked, with pathetic sincerity: 
“What use can there be in praying, if I do not 
feel like praying?” I do not find my Lord, who 
takes back a stumbling Prodigal and sobbing 
Magdalen, cautioning me against even hesitating 
petitions or a timid cry. He says: “Whosoever 
cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out.” He 


THURSDAY AFTER THE FIRST SUNDAY 51 

says: “Launch out into the deep; let down your 
net; let it down.” Doubting, stammering prayers 
will be heard with the broken petition of the 
centurion, “Lord, trouble not Thyself; I am not 
worthy”; along with the mother’s entreaty on 
the heathen coasts of Canaan, “Yes, Lord; and 
yet the dogs eat of the crumbs”; along with the 
Apostle’s confession, “We know not what to pray 
for as we ought.” 

Begin as you can; begin where you are; and 
you shall go on as you will be led. Do God’s 
work simply at His command, and you will find 
liberty and largeness and gladness in doing it. 
So faith grows, ripens, and becomes at last the 
victory that overcomes the world. Forlorn hopes, 
travelers who went out into strange places “not 
knowing whither they went,” but knowing Who 
commanded them to go, men in the fishing boat 
on Gennesaret and in ten thousand common 
pathways and workshops and homes of the 
people, — following Christ, they are the King¬ 
dom of Heaven on the earth. 

It comes finally to this: Every soul has to learn 
anew that these three living forces are necessary 
to any complete and everlasting life, — faith, 
obedience, action; faith over and above knowl¬ 
edge; obedience without delay or asking “Why?” 


5 2 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


action whether feeling induces it or not. Living 
in a world of so much misery, pain, sin, and weak¬ 
ness as this, we may be sure that the sea, the 
night, the storm, the labor, will be too much for us 
if we trust ourselves alone. To the Twelve the 
breaking of day was the coming of their Lord. 
Plenty came with faith, safety with obedience, 
strength with action, and a joyful coming in of the 
laden ship at last to the haven where they would 
be. 

Coarse, brawny hands let down the net, 

When the Lord spake and ordered so; 

They hauled the meshes, heavy-wet, 

Just as in other days, and set 

Their backs to labor, bending low. 

But quivering, leaping from the lake 
The marvellous, shining burdens rise 
Until the laden meshes break; 

And, all amazed, no man spake, 

But gazed with wonder in his eyes. 

So, still, dear Lord, in every place 
Thou standest by the toiling folk 
With love and pity in Thy face, 

And givest of Thy help and grace 
To those who meekly bear the yoke. 

Help me, O Lord, bravely and cheerfully to launch out on 
any sea where Thy providence doth send me; in the sure faith 
that my labor in Thee will not be in vain, but that Thou, in 
Thine own good time and way, wilt give me gracious results; 
For Thy mercy’s sake.—Amen. 



JFriDap after tfce JFtrst ^unoap 

Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you. — St. 
James, vi., 8. 

A precept and a promise: the precept, “Draw 
nigh”; the promise, “He will draw nigh.” The 
two make a comprehensive definition, or sum¬ 
mary, of the Christian religion. 

Notice that almost all that is told us in the 
Bible about the things of religion is told us in 
language taken from things that we see and hear. 
We use images or likenesses of them found in 
the great oustide world that we are familiar with 
through our bodily senses. We have an inter¬ 
pretation, a picture, of what is beyond our natural 
understanding in the shapes and colors and sounds 
of this which we call the “natural world,” though 
it is really no more natural than what belongs 
to our spirit is natural. The Scriptures, the 
Church, our common speech, take this for granted. 
St. James does not hesitate to say that if God, 
our Father, ever seems to be far off, He can be 
brought nigh. A Christian, taught by Christ, 

S3 


54 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


knows and can feel that God is actually with 
him whenever his own thoughts and heart are 
ready to receive Him. 

Out of this knowledge comes a rule of practical 
religious life which I wish I could help you to 
keep in sight, for it must help and comfort you 
as it does me. 

In a chapter full of plain and practical instruc¬ 
tion, St. James, the most practical of all the 
Apostles, sets this truth vividly before us, and 
uses it for our comfort. If a worshiper really 
worships, he offers something to the present, 
listening Father, to whom our Lord prayed on 
earth, and taught us to pray. Not for our own 
sake only, but for His sake, for His honor and 
praise, for the splendor of His righteousness and 
the tenderness of His love, we draw nigh to Him. 
It is an offering or presentation, self-forgetful, 
disinterested, the very “ beauty of holiness.” 
And it is also a benefit to ourselves, to the best 
part of us, the deepest, the noblest, the loveliest 
in man or woman, the everlasting personal life 
of the worshiper. You and I want something 
that we have not, — some added strength, guid¬ 
ance and courage, a quicker conscience, a braver 
resolution. We want peace, the peace that comes 
of being sure — poor, frail, selfish as we are — 


FRIDAY AFTER THE FIRST SUNDAY 55 

that we are forgiven. Then this drawing nigh 
is an exalting, ennobling, comforting devotion, 
be it praise or prayer. God keeps His promise, 
drawing nigh to us in shops and streets, in kitchens 
and parlors, in pain and festival, in parliaments 
and courts, turning even our failures into a divine 
success. 

Into some minds there creeps a notion that 
the Invisible One is to be approached, or that 
any relation with him is to be kept up, only at 
set times, by certain prescribed performances. 
They imagine that they can find Him by inquir¬ 
ing for Him once a week in a handsome house, 
unused the six days between. But the grace of 
God is not fitful or inconstant; it is perennial. 
An intermittent, periodic, occasional piety fades, 
dries up, and withers away. Plants in your gar¬ 
den that are seldom watered perish. A heart 
that beats only now and then is dying. 

One luminous truth is that the nearness of your 
Lord interferes not in the least with any right 
work in the world, hinders no useful business 
in your household or out-door calling. In its 
hidden inspiration you may call it “mystical,” 
as the hard-hearted man of the world does call it. 
So every thought of your brain or movement of 
your arm is mystical: mystery encompasses us 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


5 6 

from babyhood to the last breath. Call it as you 
please. St. James the practical, and St. John 
the beloved disciple and seer of the light in the 
face of Jesus Christ, knew. They declare to 
you that it will be the richest possession, the 
glory and the gladness of every believing soul. 

Precept and promise still stand together, as 
St. James put them. There is a cry of a Father 
to His child: “Draw nigh! draw nigh!” If you 
obey, He will lovingly draw nigh to you. The 
promise is a promise of power and of peace: 
illimitable power and unending peace. ] 

During this Lent seek by every means a nearer 
approach to the great Source of supernatural 
grace in the heart of your Lord, and a closer 
approach to the example of His righteousness. 
And may He now and always comfort you with 
His presence, answer your supplications, and 
guide and refresh you with His benediction! 

How near to me, my God, Thou art! 

Felt in the throbbing of my heart; 

Nearer than my own thoughts to me; 

Nothing is real without Thee. 

Eyes art Thou unto us, the blind; 

We turn to Thee ourselves to find; 

We set ajar no door of prayer, 

But Thou art waiting entrance there. 


FRIDAY AFTER THE FIRST SUNDAY 57 

Within me, nearer far than “near,” 

Through every thought Thy voice I hear; 

My whole life welcomes Thy control, — 

Immanuel, God within my soul! 

Thy perfect light makes morning fair; 

Thy breath is freshness in the air; 

The glory Thou of star and sun, 

Thou Soul of souls, Thou Inmost One! 

Give me to know, O God most merciful, that Thy hand is 
ever over me for good, and that Thine eyes are ever upon me 
in all that I do and think and say. No other friend is as nigh 
unto me as Thou art. Thou stickest closer than a brother; 
when father or mother are lost to me, Thou takest me up. I 
lie down under the shadow of Thy wings. I rise up, and Thy 
hand leads, Thy right hand upholds me. By Thee I live, and 
move, and have my being. Create in me, then, I pray Thee, 
a lively and wholesome sense of Thy presence; that I may turn 
to Thee for guidance in every perplexity, strength against every 
temptation, comfort in every sorrow. Lead me in the way 
that I should go, and bring me to life everlasting: For Christ’s 
sake. Amen. 


giatuttiap aftet tbe jFitist StmDap 

He that doeth the will of God abideth forever. — i John, ii., 17. 

Because I live, ye shall live also. — St. John, xiv., 19. 

That is better than all the arguments, treatises, 
analogies, or speculations about immortality. We 
share the life of Him in whom we live, and who 
lives in us. It is as simple as it can be. How 
to share it would be inconceivable except for Him 
who told us, and who came forth from God. We 
are told if we do God’s will we abide forever 
because He abides forever. The two wills, God’s 
and ours, are joined together — very unequal, but 
one. They pull the same way. Christ and a 
Christian man or woman choose and love the 
same things, seek and enjoy the same things. 
God’s eternity goes into His believing children 
through their faith in His eternal Son. That 
is the meaning of the Incarnation. We do not 
want to die; we want to live. Christ meets that 
want. “I am come that they might have life, 
and that they might have it more abundantly.” 
God comes in the Son of man so that, as each 
58 


SATURDAY AFTER THE FIRST SUNDAY 59 

son and daughter of man becomes God’s child, 
the Father’s will may be done in this world-wide 
brotherhood which the Church was meant to be 
and ought to be. 

Nothing is said, you see, of the different kinds 
of doing — trades, callings, professions, hand¬ 
work or brain-work. These distinctions sink 
out of sight. Christ came from heaven by way 
of a carpenter’s cottage to do God’s will. We 
are not here to do ours. The very root and 
essence of Christianity is self-forgetfulness, even 
to self-sacrifice. Our Lord sets that down as 
the first lesson and the last in His service and in 
His kingdom. He preaches it, lives for it, dies 
for it, symbolizes it in His cross, signifies it in 
His sacrament, rallies His church of working-men 
and working-women around it as the oriflamme of 
His triumph. He was always pointing men up 
away from themselves. Over and over He said: 
“There is God your Father: look up at Him. I 
came from Him to show you who He is. All my 
wonderful works are done for that. Obey Him: 
do His will. I came to do His will.” He sends 
each one of you on his particular life’s errand 
just as truly as He sent His prophets or apostles. 

Human forces play so powerfully up and down 
the earth nowadays, we forget that there is above 


6o 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


the hills a mystic fountain of all their real power; 
over our schemes a throne; over the earth a 
heaven. Education, machinery, great combina¬ 
tions of men and money, majorities, syndicates, 
knowledge, will do a great deal to civilize the 
world, but nothing to spiritualize it, nothing 
of themselves alone to Christianize it. Among 
sciences it is well that there should be a social 
science, a science of ethics, a school of morals; 
but that is not religion. To have this — a religion 
— I must have personal dealings with a personal, 
living God; not merely with ideas, systems, 
philosophies, or the greatest of men. I must 
do God’s will because it is His will, not because 
I think it is expedient or prudent, or beautiful, 
or brave, or profitable. 

What we need is to get up above all these 
inferior agents, these variable and uncertain 
terrestrial lights, up to the infinite, absolute, 
unchanging will of God. Christianity is not a 
discovery of ours, but a revelation from Him. 
Christ was constantly speaking a word for which 
we have no single, exact English equivalent. It 
signifies from above. By all means feed hunger, 
visit the sick, build hospitals, help the poor, break 
chains, reform prisons, shelter outcasts; in other 
words, use the Gospel to turn the wilderness of 


SATURDAY AFTER THE FIRST SUNDAY 61 


the earth into a garden of the Lord. And, 
remember, “this is the will of God.” Be per¬ 
fect in every humane and charitable work, “to do 
His will.” 

It comes finally to this: Not by the world’s 
will can the world’s wrongs be set right. Not 
by man at his best can man be redeemed. Not 
by any wit, or wisdom, or enterprise, or self-com¬ 
mand of ours can life, for you or me, be success¬ 
ful, or sin be conquered, or death disarmed. 
That can only be when, being renewed in the 
spirit of the mind, we “stand complete in all the 
will of God.” 


Blest Will of God! most glorious, 
The very fount of grace; 
Whence all the goodness floweth 
That heart can ever trace; 
Temple whose pinnacles are love, 
And faithfulness its base. 

And oh! it is a splendor, 

A glow of majesty, 

A mystery of beauty, 

If we will only see, 

A very cloud of glory 
Enfolding you and me. 

A splendor that is shining 
Upon His children’s way, 
That guides the willing footsteps 


62 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


That do not want to stray, 

And leads them ever onward 
Unto the perfect day. 

O Most Merciful Jesus, Grant that I may always desire and 
will that which is to Thee most acceptable and most dear. 

Let thy will be mine, and let my will ever follow Thine, 
and agree perfectly with it. 

Let my will be all one with Thine; and let me not be able to 
will, or to forego, anything but what Thou wiliest or dost not 
will. Amen. 


@>econO ©unDap fit lent 


I will, therefore, that men pray everywhere. — i Tim., ii., 8. 

Lord, teach us to pray. — St. Luke, xi., i. 

Of ten worshipers, equally sincere in what 
they feel and say, and all of them feeling and 
saying only what is right in its proper place and 
due proportion, each one may represent a dis¬ 
tinct grade of spiritual life. There are as many 
kinds of devotion as of character, and the char¬ 
acter may be inferred from the devotion. The 
petition, “Lord, teach us to pray,” extends to 
what is far beyond the form of expression. 

If this is true, there is matter in it for startling 
and searching reflection. There is hardly a 
more wholesome exercise of godly self-discipline 
in Lent than a courageous analysis of our words 
and utterances in private devotion. 

For example, what a plight some of us would 
find ourselves in if some of the supplications that 
run most glibly from our lips should suddenly 
be granted. What surprise there would be, 
covering us with confusion or turning us pale 
63 


64 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


with alarm! We ask that our hearts may be 
purified. But purification of hearts is a process 
that has its own conditions, methods, instru¬ 
ments, — do we remember that one of the puri¬ 
fying agents is fire? We ask that our faults 
may be corrected; do we stop to think into what 
disappointments, mortifications, sacrifices, agonies, 
the answer, if sent, might plunge us? Frivolous 
persons entreat that they may be delivered from 
the crafts of the devil; do they mean that they 
are ready for the pain that attends the going out 
of that demon already within them — a spirit 
of envy, slander, deception, selfishness — and 
which goeth not forth but by fasting as well as 
prayer, and by a downright reformation of char¬ 
acter, — in short, by a sharp battle with pleasant 
sins? 

A different error is that of a superstitious 
reverence for emotion. A scruple of this sort 
takes possession of the mind: “I feel no ardent 
desire to pray. There is no liveliness. If I 
pray at all, it will only be from a stern sense 
of duty, not with delight. God is not honored 
by reluctant or frigid offerings. It is better not 
to pray at all, or at least to wait.” 

No doubt fervor is desirable, but obedience is 
better; sentiment has its place, but conscience is 


SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT 65 

a wiser guide. The Lord does not bid us enter 
the closet when we feel like it, or say, “Ask, and 
ye shall receive” if there is an ardent glow on 
your sensibilities. Our wants are permanent. 
The relation between parent and child is abiding, 
not dependent on moods, gusts, sensations. We 
shall not sin by obeying orders. “I will, there¬ 
fore, that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy 
hands, without wrath or doubting.” Not seldom, 
if we begin with simplicity, recalling the promises, 
mentioning what we know we need, though the 
sense of it may be feeble; not striving, not specu¬ 
lating, not making ourselves critics of our own 
interiors, but rather throwing ourselves out of 
ourselves Christward, we shall find feeling grow¬ 
ing healthfully as we go on. Like many doings 
in the better life, when prayer is not by impulse, 
it must be by principle. 

Still another hindrance to personal and secret 
devotion occurs in our impatience. It is always 
difficult for a finite intelligence to realize of how 
little account the time element is to the Infinite 
and Eternal One, who is no less a Father. We 
forget the fact of our own immortality, and are 
in a hurry for relief, for a sight of the descending 
gift, for a touch of the coveted blessing. We 
have been to the edge of Mount Carmel and looked 


66 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


off over the sea five or six times, and stopped. 
We do not get what we want, and we say with 
the prophet’s servant, “There is nothing.”* 

Men make now, too, the same mistake that 
they made when they followed Christ, because 
they saw His miracles and hungered for “ bread 
alone.” . . . But the pledges of heaven contain 
no guarantee that when we are seeking first the 
kingdom of outward prosperity, we shall find it. 
The wrong motive weakens the prayer. God may 
grant an imperfect petition to lead a weak soul 
to devotions of greater spiritual height and depth; 
but He has never engaged that painlessness of 
mind or body shall be a reward of trusting Him. 

All through this life, in our prayers as in every¬ 
thing else, we are under a discipline of mystery, 
working on little by little toward the world of 
perfect light where the mystery will be opened, 
and the satisfaction of awaking in the Lord’s 
likeness will be complete. It is right to ask for 
a respite from pain or tears, for the sparing of a 
good man’s life, — for so the Saviour prayed in 
the Garden. But if faith is true, it will never 
depend on any visible manifestation of the de¬ 
livering power; nor will it fail to pray again because 
the desired bounty is withheld. 

* i Kings, xviii., 43, 44. 


SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT 


67 


“ Nevertheless, O Father, not as I will, but as 
Thou wilt,” — that is a petition that is never un¬ 
answered. Let faith cry for peace under the 
grief, and willingness to bear it. Though our 
disappointed senses return after searching the 
unchanged sky again and again for the signs of 
rain, and report in dismay “There is nothing,” 
yet such a faith as this will be our prophet. She 
will keep her strength, her serenity, and her hope, 
and be a cheerful faith still, satisfied with know¬ 
ing that her Redeemer liveth, Lord of the clouds 
and sun alike, of the promise and the fruits. 

Again I kneel, again I pray: 

“Wilt Thou be God to me? 

Wilt Thou give ear to what I say, 

And lift me up to Thee? 

“Lord, is it true? O vision high! 

The clouds of heaven dispart; 

An opening depth of loving sky 
Looks down into my heart. 

“There is a home wherein to dwell — 

The very heart of light! 

Thyself my Sun immutable, 

My moon and stars all night!” . . . 

The clouds return. The common day 
Falls on me like a “No”; 

But I have seen what might be — may, — 

And with a hope I go. 


68 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


O Thou who knowest each heart and its prayer, each house 
and its need: 

Perfect us in what gifts we lack; and that we may trust Thee 
as we ought, help Thou our want of trust; 

Be Thou to us a Rock of strength, and let us love nothing, 
and trust nothing, in comparison with Thee: 

Bless with us every friend, relative, benefactor, whom Thou 
hast granted to us in goodness, and bound us to with duty; 

Remember those who are away; bring near those who are 
afar; teach the prayerless to pray: 

Remember every fruitful soul in trial; and comfort, if it be 
possible, every one in sorrow or distress. 

And now, O Lord, into Thy hands we commend our souls 
and our prayers: give what Thou seest fit, and fit us for what 
Thou givest. Amen. 


e@ondap after tfte Second ^undap 

As I beheld, . . . when the living creatures went, the wheels 
went by them; and when the living creatures were lifted up from 
the earth, the wheels were lifted up. Whithersoever the spirit 
was to go, they went, thither was their spirit to go, . . . for the 
spirit of the living creature was in the wheels. — Ezek., i., 15,19, 
20. 


In every description of our religion, given us 
in the Scriptures, we are never suffered to forget 
that it is a living thing. Whatever the variety 
of names and images, under each and all of them 
is seen to be a life. It may be a Person shown 
us — the Son of Man, — a Gospel of Good News 
or a kingdom of law and order, a truth for the 
mind or a Church organized, a principle or a 
power, — always, everywhere, it must be alive. 
So when we have the vision here of the coming 
glory of Christ among men, and of the frame¬ 
work where His presence dwells, we see first a 
marvelous mechanism; but in every limb of the 
system, in every radiating spoke and rim of 
the fiery wheels, there is a living spirit, or else 
the whole will hang a dull, dark weight, motion¬ 
less and helpless. 


69 


70 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


A great deal has been gained when it is found 
out that a man’s religion is not only something 
to be believed by his believing faculty, and some¬ 
thing to be felt by his feeling faculty, and thought 
about by his thinking faculty, but something to be 
done by his doing, willing, and working faculty. 
A creed on the lips is just so much vanishing 
breath unless it becomes the creed of hands and 
feet, manifest in conduct, which is not character, 
but the test of character. Test your own daily 
work by that rule. Look higher than mere bodily 
subsistence and material profit, and it appears 
that what you do has a spirit, a law, a character 
in itself, according to the brain and heart with 
which it is done, all the way up from bondage 
and drudgery to a vague liberty and a kind of 
artistic delight — the joy you feel in making a 
perfect thing. This freedom and light, whether 
intellectual or spiritual, has three effects on what 
you do: it adds to the motive-power; it directs 
and improves the service; it multiplies and en¬ 
nobles the fruit. 

In the faith of Jesus Christ, delivered in the 
New Testament, we have the same twofold 
character, the “wheels” of an outward consti¬ 
tution and a power of an inward “life” propelling 
them. What the prophet had seen centuries 


MONDAY AFTER THE SECOND SUNDAY 71 

before, in the brightness of his vision by the river 
Chebar, comes to pass by all the water-sides 
and mountain-sides of the globe. Not more 
wheels than the Spirit can lightly carry, lift up, 
and move forward in orderly movement. There 
is an institution, and the institution is alive. 
There is a body, and the body breathes, moves, 
suffers, takes hold of the solid world. 

Now come closer to where we are. If this life 
— which is really and only the life of Christ Him¬ 
self, coming down from heaven among men and 
abiding here — is in the body, why is it not in 
its outward activities as well as in its unseen 
sanctities? Why not in its working forces as 
well as in its worshiping devotions ? Why not in 
its outdoor charities as well as indoors, before 
altars ? — for these charities too are sacramental, 
having an outward and visible form and an in¬ 
ward and invisible grace, clearly ordained by 
Christ Himself. Only is the body healthy when 
the Life is in every limb and organ and sinew 
and blood-vessel, because it is in the heart, puls¬ 
ing out to the tips of the extremities. 

One other law of this great twofold kingdom 
of God animates and encourages us. Living 
things grow faster and stronger not only by the 
original force in them, but they grow by growing. 


72 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


Of all right strength put forth, the returning 
energy is a reality and a blessing. With every 
stroke of his axe the woodman’s arm is stouter. 
With every steady shot the huntsman’s sight is 
keener. In the circuit of the waters the grain 
cast upon the stream comes back. You ask 
yourself sometimes, sitting with folded hands, 
what you shall pray for, and your prayer is dull. 
Go to work, try to help somebody, begin to build 
something, teach a class of children, watch with 
a sick pauper, sew for the half-clothed child of a 
western missionary, and you are no longer uncer¬ 
tain what to pray for; the prayer prays itself; 
love kindles; faith quickens; hope mounts up 
with wings. The fountain sent its gift to the 
river; and the river returned it by the way of the 
ocean to the fountain again. The heart sent 
its blood to the working hand and running feet, 
and, in the mystic, hidden circulation of the 
wheels of life, hands and feet send it back — 
better blood — to the heart. 

We gather up the doctrine finally to its immedi¬ 
ate application. They only are Christ’s followers 
who follow Him — men and women, young men 
and young women — by working His work in 
some straight and ordered way, putting their 
belief into service, counting no cross too hard to 


MONDAY AFTER THE SECOND SUNDAY 73 

bear for Him cheerfully, speaking for Him one 
to another unpretendingly but bravely, letting 
some light caught from the Dayspring shine for 
Him. Every one who has a heart can put his 
heart into his religion, and then the Spirit will 
put more religion into his heart; and from heart 
to heart it will burn, as fire. 

Great voices call to labor. “Lo, my Father 
Works, and I work with Him,” the Master said: 

Are we His servants, then, if we would rather 
In easier pathways than He chose be led? 

Work may be drudgery: it is so only 

When God we leave out of the task He gives, 

Or choose our own, apart from Him, — a lonely 
Treadmill of selfishness, where no joy lives. 

Work is the holiest thing in earth or heaven: 

To lift from souls the sorrow and the curse, — 

This dear employment must to us be given, 

While there is want in God’s great universe. 

Graciously, O Lord, work some good by us in our time, 
that we go not empty-handed into the grave. Let there be in 
our work, if it so please Thee, refreshment to mankind, and 
health to our own souls. Lead us in it all the day long; and 
say, “Well done, faithful servant,” when Thou bringest us to 
our rest. We ask it for Christ’s sake. Amen. 


CuesDap after tfie Seconti ^unDap 

Who layeth the beams of His chambers in the waters. — Ps., 
civ., 3. 

The figure here presented is that of durableness 
in the midst of change, or stability in fluctuation. 
God makes it a ground of security to us, and an 
appeal to our confidence, that He frames for 
Himself a permanent abiding-place on the most 
restless elements of change. In the fluent waste 
of waters there are “ beams.” Where we see 
confusion, we can know that He sees a plan, 
“fitly framed together.” Where we are afloat 
He makes a home, of the storm a calm. 

The general fitness of this assurance to the 
help of faith in the common working of life, 
where very few of us find our faith beyond the 
need of encouragement, is evident. In the natural 
creation nothing seems fixed. Change is the 
only constancy; and if there is any law, the un¬ 
taught observer says it must be a law of vicissi¬ 
tude. But look again: and under this wild dance 
of accidents there presently begin to arise signs 
74 


TUESDAY AFTER THE SECOND SUNDAY 75 

of steadfastness. Day and night, seedtime and 
harvest, summer and winter, still chase each 
other, but it is not perpetual innovation; it is 
alternation. One thing is “set over against” 
another, and each is “bountiful in its time.” 
These fixed processes of nature, detected through 
its varying appearances, are only the “ beams ” 
of God’s “chambers,” laid strong and still in 
the waters that rise and fall. 

Passing from Nature to Society, we do not 
escape the aspect of irregularity. Even the 
great forms of civil governments, with all their 
motives to permanency, maintain no superiority 
to change. The quarrels of dynasties, the shuf¬ 
fling of policies, the whims of administrations, 
resemble the effect of cross-winds on the surface 
of hidden currents more than anything stationary. 
Nor do we find any relief from the unsatisfactory 
illusion till we turn from the study , of States to 
the God of States. Then we begin to behold 
traces of design, of slow and sure workings out 
of His purposes, so that we see the beams lying 
broad and mighty across the waters. Age con¬ 
nects itself with age. There is a majestic unity 
from first to last. 

The appalling fluctuations come still closer 
to personal feeling, — appalling, that is, when 


76 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


we miss the Christian meaning, and see the 
“waters” only, without the “beams.” Even 
in the comparatively short space of a generation, 
how many institutions, customs, employments, 
homes, companionships, which seemed in their 
time to be necessary to us, get loosened and drop 
away! Everything, then, depends on whether 
our confiding and unquestioning hearts find 
above the changes the Unchangeable; whether 
we are able to recognize permanency in the 
midst of inconstancy, God’s faithfulness under 
the fickleness of the world, the immortality of 
His principles notwithstanding the mutability of 
all outward forms. 

Nor is this the whole. Faith can show us a 
fixed and beautiful relation between the two. 
She can show us how disorders in the flesh are 
health to the heart; how vibrations in business 
confirm self-control; how hardships soften, and 
separations unite, and losses enrich, and infirm¬ 
ities strengthen, and how being “at our wit’s 
end” often gives assurance. She shows how 
our Heavenly Guide builds in the waters the 
chambers of His living Fold. 

There are few men who have not sometime 
felt a chill on the heart at the thought that pos¬ 
sibly their toil were fruitless and their suffering 


TUESDAY AFTER THE SECOND SUNDAY 77 

aimless. At that moment any soul on earth 
would certainly be stronger and happier to be 
sure that all this dark confusion has a plan — 
God’s plan — running through every part of it, 
and drawing the most painful elements in it to a 
final harmony; just as one theme runs through 
the variations of complicated music, or one design 
through the architectural details of a building. 
Wherever the stormy waters have swung and 
swayed, the beams of Almighty Good-will rested 
in them, and would not be moved. The design 
may be all hidden by the tears and agonies, the 
beams covered by the waters. But there the 
beams rest; they brace the walls of the everlast¬ 
ing plan. They are the token that God means 
to abide now with His people as He has ever 
since His Spirit moved over the waves of the 
forming worlds, as He will till “ there shall be no 
more sea.” 

Remember, this truth is to teach us trust. The 
fluctuation around us we can feel on our nerves 
and brain; but the steady Hand we feel only with 
a finer organ — the believing heart. The sorrow 
and the pain are palpable to sense, the “ waters 
are gone over our soul”; but when, out of the 
depths, we have lived unto God, it was not fingers 
of flesh, nor what people call “clear ideas,” nor 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


78 

any such thing, but hands of faith, feeling after 
God among the waves, that laid hold of the 
“beams.” “Wherefore let us hold fast the pro¬ 
fession of our faith without wavering; for He is 
faithful that promised.” 

All, all beneath the shining sun 
Is vanity and dust; 

Help us, O high and holy One, 

To fix in Thee our trust. 

And, in the change and interfuse 
Of change, with every hour, 

To recognize the shifting hues 
Of never-changing Power. 

O God, who changest not Thyself; and who ever guidest by 
Thy divine providence the changes of this world to thine own 
glory and the benefit of Thy people; give us grace so entirely 
to place our confidence in Thee, that no changes or chances of 
life may hurt us, nor draw us from Thy service: Through 
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 


2x3eDne0tiap after the ©econD ©unDap 

I will arise. — Luke, xv., 18. 


Out in the “far country” there is a man smitten 
by the awakened consciousness of wrong-doing. 
So far the lower nature has been uppermost in 
him. Blame has been overborne; conscience 
has been drugged: appetite has run wild. At 
last something happens: he says, “I will.” The 
nobler powers in him are gathered up by the 
royal mastery of his manhood, and with this “I 
will” upon his lips he arises and goes home to 
his father. You and I may not call ourselves 
prodigals, but we are all more or less in wrong¬ 
doing and wrong-going, and need to say “I will.” 

The degree of this will-power in different 
persons is found to be different, but always it is 
the mark and measure of character. Rising 
from the lower orders of life, we see nothing of 
it, properly speaking, till we come up to humanity. 
The “hundred sheep in the wilderness” seek 
their pasture instinctively. There is no driving 
at a morally selected end, only a physical quali- 
79 


8 o 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


fication. If they go wrong, if one by one the 
flock wanders, instead of calling them to account 
we call some human factor. If we can find a will 
anywhere, we reckon with it. 

And we do find that wherever we discover a 
son or daughter of mankind, however ignorant 
or juvenile or poor. Something in each one is 
able to say, “I will arise.” By virtue of that 
human characteristic and prerogative God deals 
with His child. Each soul decides “I will,” or 
“I will not.” 

Coming then among humankind, whether 
reading history or looking about us, we see this 
willing power in an endless variety of strength 
or weakness. In every instance it makes per¬ 
sonality, because it is what sets a force acting 
in a direction that is chosen. Nothing else does 
this. Knowledge, even a great deal of it, may 
be inactive in the mind. Affection may be silent 
from reserve or timidity. Conscience, though 
telling us clearly enough what is right and what 
is wrong, may yet leave a heart wavering and 
vacillating between them. But the moment that 
we will , we arise and go on a chosen path. It 
may be to good or to evil, but there is movement. 

At two periods in his life the younger son of 
the Parable showed himself a man of voluntary 


WEDNESDAY AFTER THE SECOND SUNDAY 81 

energy, but in two exactly opposite directions: 
once when he broke from duty, exacted his 
patrimony, gathered all together, took his journey, 
and wasted his substance. The same power of 
will acted when he turned his face about and went 
back. The prodigal said actually first, “I will 
sink,” and he went down. He said afterwards, 
“I will arise,” and went up to where eighteen 
hundred years have beheld him. “He came to 
himself”; that is, he got back his personal will¬ 
power, and, taking sides with duty and God, his 
converted soul had manliness and godliness 
enough to save him. 

Every sinning man and boy, every sinning 
woman and girl, also has it. Along the ages 
stand out memorable figures of men — one, per¬ 
haps, to the million who are forgotten. The line 
of their action may have been bad or good, — 
enterprise, war, exploration, the building of 
empires or the spreading of the kingdom of 
heaven on the earth, — but one thing about 
them is always the same. Their power of will 
was greater than that of the men about them. 
It made a pathway for itself through obstacles 
and difficulties, and these yielded to a steady 
impulsion like the sluggish seas to the Gulf stream. 
The records of human greatness are the story of 


82 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


the triumphs of the human will. And as to the 
Divine Will, when the Scriptures would show 
us the absolute authority, the infinite Power and 
Law of heaven they say, “This is the Will of 
God.” Our reconciliation with that Will is 
salvation. We pray daily for the doing of that 
Will as the first felicity of the universe, the com¬ 
ing of a Kingdom which is the regeneration of the 
race. When Christ, Son of man and Son of God, 
puts man’s will and God’s will at one, that is the 
Atonement, and so far sin and death are dead. 

When the voice of God calls any one of us to 
enter by repentance and faith on the everlasting 
life, when He says “Come unto me,” to what 
part of us does He speak? Is it to our under¬ 
standing, or our feelings, or our conscience, or 
our faith? Or is it to our will? What is it that 
says, “I will arise?” The word itself answers: 
“I, the personal man, to whom my Maker has 
entrusted this royal ability — will. And then 
over the hills of difficulty, through all the valleys 
of doubt, I go home. And there the Father, 
whose patient love wrought with me long before, 
waiting for me, takes me in; and it is the beginning 
of my heaven when he says: ‘This my son was 
lost and is found; let us make merry and be 
glad.’” 


WEDNESDAY AFTER THE SECOND SUNDAY 83 

My friends, this power, lodged in your keeping 
by the Almighty, is a very gracious gift. Weak¬ 
ness is wretchedness, and there is no infirmity 
which so shakes the foundations and consumes 
the joy of manhood and womanhood as an in¬ 
constant, wavering will. We have all seen that 
dismal sight, — good intentions hanging in sus¬ 
pense, bad habits resisted but always coming 
back to mock the vacillating victim, generous 
impulses flickering and dying, lofty aims aban¬ 
doned, no fixed character. Who of us will not 
pray to be delivered from that miserable irreso¬ 
lution? Who of us would not deliver his brother 
from it if he could? 

Use your strength. Use your will. Like the 
character which it creates, it is meant to be never 
a stationary, but always a growing thing. It 
was granted to you not only to rescue yourself, 
but to make you a serviceable son or daughter 
in the Sacred Family which, even here on the 
earth, is the household of God. The Spirit 
will help its infirmity. The Church will feed it 
with her bountiful ministries of light and grace. 
Through Christ which strengthened you, you 
can do all things which saint or hero, in your 
place, is required to do. For in Him you will 
become one with the purpose and plan of God; 


abideth 


84 THE DAYS OF LENT 

and “He that doeth the will of God 
forever.” 

Arise, and go with reverent will, 

And as thy day, thy strength shall be; 

Were there no Power beyond the ill, 

The ill could not have come to thee. 

Arise, and seek some height to gain 
From life’s dark lessons day by day, 

Not just rehearse its peace and pain, 

A wearied actor at the play. 

Nor grieve God’s will so oft transcends 
Thy feebler will, but in content 

Do what thou canst, and leave the ends 
And issues with the Omnipotent. 

O God, who in mercy hast taught us how good it is to keep 
the good resolves which the Holy Spirit puts into our hearts, 
and how bitter is the grief of falling short of any good that we 
meant to do, or of overcoming any temptation that we were 
minded to resist; strengthen us, we beseech Thee, to walk stead¬ 
fastly in any path which our better judgment has approved, 
or our wiser heart has desired; so that, having been faithful 
over few things here, Thou mayest call us to a “larger room” 
of faithful and joyous service hereafter. Grant it for Christ’s 
sake. Amen. 


CftutsDap after tfte ©ecottO ^utiOag 

Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill 
cannot be hid. — St. Matt., v., 14. 

What Christ does for the better life of men is 
in two parts. First, He brings out clearly before 
them a living image — not merely an idea — of 
the best that a man can be. He simply lives, 
and His life is the light of men. Here, however, 
apparently turning away from the light in Him¬ 
self, He says, “Ye are the light of the world.” It 
is unexpected and surprising. For notice care¬ 
fully where and to whom He speaks when He 
says “Ye.” Three times we are told of the audi¬ 
ence literally present that “great multitudes made 
it up,” and they represented every class. Every¬ 
body that knows what hunger and thirst are, 
who “the pure in heart are,” who the merciful 
or the mourners are, everybody that has seen a 
house lighted by a candle or the body lighted by 
the eye, or the fowls of the air fly, or a lily grow, 
or a tree bring forth fruit, is meant when the 
Lord says, “Ye are the light of the world.” He 


86 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


means ourselves, here. Man’s heart is no more 
changed since that day than the mountain where 
they stood, or Christ’s truth than the sunlight 
that fell upon it. In whatever sense these Syrians 
were the light of the world, you are. We are to 
try to find out, then, what the meaning of the 
saying is. 

Two familiar principles of speech furnish the 
key to it. One is that things which live and grow 
are often described as being already what their 
inborn nature and gift makes them capable of 
becoming. The promise is in the seed, and plant¬ 
ing the seed, we trust to the law of its develop¬ 
ment. Prophets predict in the present tense, 
turning foresight into testimony. It is the ver¬ 
nacular of faith. When our Lord, therefore, 
assures His followers that they are the light of 
the world, He informs them not of their merits 
but of their calling and their privilege. 

The other law of impression runs a little deeper. 
By being told high things about themselves men 
are roused and quickened to high endeavor; men 
who are men, and women who deserve their 
name. (^Natures mean or vain may be degraded 
by a compliment; but all natural nobility is 
made nobler by it. “I will be,” says the better 
man within you, “what this partiality thinks I 


THURSDAY AFTER THE SECOND SUNDAY 87 

am.” Christ constantly appeals to what is best 
in men. “Mind,” He says, “your purer instincts; 
you have them. Obey the uplifting voice within 
you. It is God’s voice. Live up to your birth¬ 
right. Bring what light you have. It may be 
but a candle or a rush. Watch the working of 
every ray and see ‘ how far that little candle throws 
its beams’; bring it, and with it do your best to 
fight back the darkness.” The Son of man 
reached after whatever bit of manhood or woman¬ 
hood nature had given, and threw on it the strength 
of His love. He breathed on His Apostles, and 
they caught His breath, crying to timid preachers 
and halting Christians, “Ye see your calling, 
brethren; how high the calling is! Walk worthy 
of it; live your life up to it, your thinking life, 
your studying life, your working life.” 

Hence the light which Christ saw in His dis¬ 
ciples was actually the light which rises on the 
world in Him, the everlasting sun of a perfect 
righteousness. It is a communicated glory. His 
confidence in them is confidence in the truth 
and love embodied in Himself. He knows that, 
after all, the heart of men, even stumbling men, 
longs for more light. The ocean of God’s love 
is the native passion of the soul. This prodigal 
race of ours bears in its breast, in the far country, 


88 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


a homesick heart. It was to that longing that 
Christ came and spoke and lived. He foresaw 
the day in the Dayspring. “To give knowledge 
of salvation unto his people, by the remission of 
their sins, through the tender mercy of our God; 
whereby the Dayspring from on high hath visited 
us, to give light to them that sit in darkness, to 
guide our feet into the way of peace.” 

“Ye are the light of the world”: — that text 
arraigns us for trial, has in it an accent of reproof. 
How can that be? Because everything must be 
judged according to its obedience to the laws of 
its being. If the furnishing of your body and 
mind, your early training, your great opportunity, 
your friendships, your affections, your sacra¬ 
mental nourishment, commit you and bind you 
over to be, every day you live and everywhere, 
bringers of light, and yet you give no light, what 
are you then? How do you look to yourselves, 
to God? “If the light that is in you” — in you 
by my illuminating gift, says the Son of man — 
“ be darkness, how great is that darkness! ” “As 
ye have therefore received the gift, even so min¬ 
ister the same as good stewards.” “Set your 
light on a candlestick.” 

We are too apt to think of unprofitable or 
wicked lives as if the only loss were their own. 


THURSDAY AFTER THE SECOND SUNDAY 89 

But there is the more awful accountability of a 
betrayed stewardship, a forfeited trust. Take 
warning! The doctrine gathers itself up into a 
personal charge. We are in a close place undoubt¬ 
edly; nothing will set us free but a look upward, 
a reverent reception of light, of spiritual power, 
from Him who alone can give it, and that trans¬ 
mission which lets it shine before men in char¬ 
acter. Character is not of places, but of the 
heart and will. Working to that end, we can 
work on contentedly after that Eternal Leader 
at whose heart of love all our little lamps are 
lighted. 


Thou one all-perfect Light! 

Our lamps are lit at Thine; 

And into darkness as of night 
We go to prove they shine. 

Yea, He who from the Father forth was sent, 

Came like a lamp, to bring 
Across the winds and wastes of night 
The everlasting light. . . . 

The very shadows on our souls that lie 
Good witness to the Light supernal bear; 

The something ’twixt us and the sky 

Could cast no shadow if light were not there. 

O Thou that alone makest all contradictions clear, in Thy 
light let us see light. Illuminate our minds with the practice 


9 o 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


of charity and humility, and confirm them with growth of faith. 
Make us cheerful in duty, firm in endurance, with liveliness of 
thanksgiving and confidence in prayer. Lead us out of every 
darkness, into the light of hope and faith in Thee: For Thy 
goodness’ sake. Amen. 


jFtfDag after tfie ^econn ^unoap 

Then said I: Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is 
written of me) to do thy will, O God. — Heb., x., 7. 

Jesus saith unto them: My meat is to do the will of Him 
that sent me. — St. John, iv., 34 

“Lo, I come to do thy will, O God.” You 
know at once who it was who said it. Only 
One of all the leaders, commanders, and kings, 
all the scholars, thinkers, and educators of man¬ 
kind, would dare to say it. Because He could 
say it, and make His own life to its last agony 
the proof of His saying, therefore the world ever 
since has been another world, human life a new 
thing, and His followers an army which is an 
unconquerable brotherhood. And all this be¬ 
cause, and only because, that One came to do, 
and did, the will of God. See that, take it in, 
fix it immovably in your minds. This — nothing 
else — made Christ the master-workman, master- 
sufferer, and master-lover of our race. 

Remember the will was done on the earth and 
not in heaven; done among men, not angels; 
among men not always true or generous or rev- 
91 


92 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


erent, among women whose hearts were not 
always unstained, whose temper was not gentle; 
— among such people, one Man, born of woman, 
did God’s will. And what is wonderful, He tells 
us what the doing of it was to Him: “My meat 
is to do the will of Him that sent me.” It was 
to Him what eating is to hunger. It fed Him, 
refreshed Him, strengthened Him, satisfied Him. 
Think of this as your idea of religion. 

More than that: He saw the Church rising and 
spreading in all lands, true worshipers in it, 
saints loving it and giving labor and money to 
spread it, pagan wildernesses turned into the fruit¬ 
ful fields and wedlock-guarded homes of a peace¬ 
ful industry, hospitals, orphanages, asylums, sons 
and daughters of God running, waiting, denying 
themselves, helping neighbors in His name,— all 
this He saw coming after Him. This was the 
meat that satisfied Him, “content to do that will.” 
It appears more and more what religion was to 
Him. 

One of His Apostles brings this reality over 
from the Master to his followers and hands it 
down to us. For you and me, in some practical 
way and in some glorious measure, it is possible 
to be doing the will of God. He puts it in the 
form of a benediction, and thousands of ministers 


FRIDAY AFTER THE SECOND SUNDAY 93 

say it over to departing congregations, hurrying 
away and scarcely thinking what the blessing 
is: “Now may He who brought again from the 
dead our Lord Jesus Christ, make you perfect 
in every good work, to do His will.” 

Notice the last four words tell us what good 
work, perfect work is. Whether your daily 
occupation shall be good or bad depends on 
something within it, out of sight, — what we 
call the “spirit” of it, a fine, invisible quality 
which runs through it all. The work itself is 
one thing; the spirit of the work is another. 
Hand and brain may be clever and quick at their 
task and earn their pay. Do you conclude that 
all this is “good work” or “perfect work,” so 
done? I think you do not: you understand well 
enough that of all this daily labor which makes 
the stir and thrift of the nation there is another 
test, another standard of value, quite another 
way of measuring and weighing and reckoning 
what it is worth. What, then, makes your work 
good work, strong work, lasting work, more and 
more perfect work? Hear the answer: “Now 
the God of peace . . . make you perfect in every 
good work to do His will.” 

Take that for your motive. Touch all this 
toil and drudgery with that divine breath in which 


94 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


breathes the Will of God, divine with the divinity 
of Christ. Let in upon your work this heavenly 
illumination. Open your windows upwards. 
Open the door to Him, the Light of the World, 
who knocks there. Set forward by all means all 
these busy enterprises and ingenious industries, 
for it is not that they are ignoble or guilty in them¬ 
selves; but set them forward with the motive 
power of the Lord’s almighty Will acting down 
on them through your will. When you go about 
your work be conscious of His presence. Then 
the new and brighter day will not only shine 
around you, but within you. Then the day’s 
work will not be drudgery. It may be hard, 
but not mean; lowly and dirty to the hand, but 
not base or dirty to the heart. You may be a 
servant, but never a slave. The Will of God is 
a large Will. It emancipates, it equalizes, it gives 
titles of nobility impartially. Where it is, there 
is liberty. Capital does not there tyrannize over 
labor; labor does not there burn or kill capital. 
And all this because of the every-day obedience 
to the everlasting Will; all because that cease¬ 
less prayer offered by the lips of millions of be¬ 
lievers from age to age, the common liturgy of 
Christendom, “Thy will be done on earth,” is 
answered. Nothing that you can count or reckon 


FRIDAY AFTER THE SECOND SUNDAY 95 


or weigh or eat or wear is the fruit of your labor, 
the “ treasure laid up.” Your body will wear 
out, over-tasked, diseased, run down by time. 
God’s consuming fire will try every man’s work 
of what sort it is; but even His fire is love, and 
the soul of the workman who doeth His will, 
His obedient child, is safe. With quite as sure 
a confidence as that of Richard’s crusaders or 
Cromwell’s Ironsides, we can go to our daily 
business shouting and singing their battle-hymn 
in our hearts, “It is the will of God.” 

Whatso it be, howso it be, Amen. 

Blessed it is, believing, not to see: 

Now God knows all that is; and we shall then, 

Whatso it be. 

God’s Will is best for man whose will is free: 

God’s Will is better to us, yea, than ten 

Desires whereof He holds and weighs the key: 

He knows all wants, allots each where and when, 
Whatso it be. 

O Heavenly Father, Thou who workest hitherto, and dost 
appoint Thy creatures to do Thy will and fulfil Thy work; 
give me grace to do with diligence and cheerfulness whatever 
work Thou givest me to do; and ever more and more to seek to 
know Thy Will, loving it and obeying it with all my heart: 
which I beg for Jesus’ Christ’s sake. Amen. 


©aturtrap after t&e §econD ©uttDap 

And ere the lamp of God went out in the temple of the Lord, 
where the ark of God was, and Samuel was laid down to sleep, 
the Lord called Samuel, and he answered: “Here am I. . . . 
Speak, for thy servant heareth. — i Sam., iii., 3, 4, 10. 

There are undoubtedly two views taken of 
the nature of the thing that we call Christianity. 
One represents the world as a field of man’s work, 
and so calls on men to put forth their self-impelled 
activity in it; the other represents it as a scene of 
the work of God in Christ, and calls on men to 
witness His presence, to welcome His spirit, and 
to make themselves willing and obedient instru¬ 
ments in His hand. 

We need not undervalue either the toiling 
hand or the trusting heart. Work is too noble 
and too much needed to be even indirectly dis¬ 
paraged. The world everywhere waits for it, — 
fruitful, righteous, cheerful work. No; the ques¬ 
tion is not whether men shall work, but how they 
shall work to a purpose, that is, work rightly. 
Here the voice of Christ speaks, and speaks 
unmistakably. It says: To work rightly, to 

96 


SATURDAY AFTER THE SECOND SUNDAY 97 

work effectually, you must work from God, — 
consciously, faithfully, piously, from God. His 
Christ must be your Leader, His Spirit your law, 
His will your motive. 

If we are Christians, we shall hold that no work 
is done well that is not done religiously. No 
life is truly lived that is not done in the spirit of 
the child who arose in the temple and answered 
the heavenly summons with his reverent, “ Speak, 
Lord, for thy servant heareth.” For he seems 
like a prophecy of that other Child, born later 
for a yet diviner ministry, who also spoke in the 
temple and said, “Wist ye not that I must be 
about my Father’s business?” 

Now, different periods, places, communities, 
have their peculiar perils. The business of 
Christianity is to meet with its positive and inex¬ 
haustible power just the pressing danger. Dream¬ 
ing is not the American weakness. All the wheels 
of prosperous enterprise are running. Action 
is spontaneous. So work needs to be preached 
less, just here, than faith. We want to charge 
all this human enginery, this useful doing, with 
the spring or motive power of true good in God, 
and so convert it to Christ. This is Chris¬ 
tianity. 

That our religion, in its explicit and holiest 


9 8 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


sense, is the veritable guide of our life, the sup¬ 
port under it, the inspiration quickening it, the 
comfort healing it, the promise irradiating it; 
that a man has learnt how to live only when his 
daily cry is precisely that old cry: “Thy servant 
heareth; here I am at Thy bidding, for Thy ser¬ 
vice ”;— this is shown in the fact that such a 
doctrine stands in exact agreement with the only 
true theory of the origin of life. Strictly speak¬ 
ing, there is but one life. “Man lives only from 
God.” Every moment this creative life flows 
in. These throbbing hearts that warm the world 
are only pulses from one central and everlasting 
Heart of Love. “In the beginning God created” 
is the sublime key-note of the Old Testament. 
“I can do all things through Christ which strength¬ 
ened me,” is the blessed consolation of the New. 
Christ came to be a divine, personal influence in 
the world, that in and through His Person the 
Divine Life might veritably and literally flow 
into the hearts of mankind. He came not to 
tell us the manner of living, but to communicate, 
to pour in upon all willing and receiving hearts, 
the power of living — the energy that acts itself 
spontaneously into holy thoughts and deeds. 

Out of this childlike looking upward into the 
spiritual world comes the manliest pressing for- 


SATURDAY AFTER THE SECOND SUNDAY 99 


ward into enterprises for the world around you; 
out of the believing prayer, each duty of the day. 
It was when Hannah’s son laid down to sleep, 
ere the lamp of God went out in the temple, — 
the ark of sacred promise resting at his side, — 
that the voice called. 

The revelations of God are not ended, if only 
there are earnest eyes to see them, even though 
the lamp has gone out in the Hebrew temple. 
His voice has not ceased speaking, if childlike 
trust listens, though the ark of the elder cov¬ 
enant has floated away into darkness. Each 
obedient and thoughtful heart may take up the 
supplication: “Lord, I am here; speak, for Thy 
servant heareth.” Then God himself, He that 
created you, will answer: “Fear not. I have 
called thee by name, and thou art mine; I have 
redeemed thee. When thou walkest through the 
waters I will be with thee; and through the rivers, 
they shall not overflow thee. I am thy God, thy 
Saviour. Ye shall be my sons and my daughters, 
saith the Lord God Almighty.” 


Still as of old Thy precious word 
Is by the nations dimly heard; 

The hearts its holiness hath stirred 
Are weak and few. 

Wise men the secret dare not tell; 

Life, 


IOO 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


Still in Thy temple slumbers well 
Good Eli. Oh, like Samuel, 

Lord, here am I. . . . 

Oh, make me strong, that, staff and stay, 

And guide and guardian of the way, 

To thee-ward I may bear each day 
Some fainting soul. 

Speak, for I hear: make pure in heart; 

Thy face to see, Thy truth impart, 

In hut and hall, in church and mart, 

Lord, here am I. 

I ask no heaven till earth be Thine, 

Nor glory-crown while work of mine 
Remaineth here. When earth shall shine 
Among the stars, — 

Her sins wiped out, her captives free, 

Her voice a music unto Thee, — 

For crown, new work give Thou to me! 

Lord, here am I. 

O Lord God Almighty, who out of Thy treasure bringest 
things new and old for man’s instruction, let voices of the past 
persuade me to repentance and faith, of the present to obedience 
and diligence, of the revealed future to holiness and charity, 
— yea, let all voices persuade me to charity. Speak, Lord, 
for Thy servant heareth. Grant me grace to hear though 
both mine ears tingle; and to obey, though taking my life in 
my hand: For His sake whose merit exceeds all my demerit, 
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 


Cfcftti ©unDap fn lent 

Ask, and it shall be given you. — St. Matt., vii., 7. 


The moment man or child feels one earnest 
moment lifting his desire heavenward, that is 
the providential moment for him to cry, “Our 
Father,” and pour out his heart’s emotion to the 
last drop, whether of penitence, thanksgiving, or 
anxiety. The Father never rebuffs such eager 
confidence. To deny that holy yearning, to bid 
it wait, and analyze itself to see if it is fit, is only 
to throw a door open to chilling doubts and 
altered moods. It is to refuse a divine call. It 
is quenching the Holy Spirit. 

“Ask, and it shall be given you.” It is enough 
for us to pray as Jesus Christ prayed. This 
entangles us in no subtleties and freezes us with 
no negations. It takes us straight to our 
Father, with no misgiving that He does not hear 
what we pray. This centers faith outside this 
narrow region of self — even our better self, 
by hanging every circumstance of life, the most 
minute or afflicting, on the direct and immediate 


IOI 


102 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


word of our Lord. This Christianizes our prayers; 
it makes them with their answers that veritable 
communion, that literal asking and receiving 
between the soul and God, which is as strictly 
personal as the petition of any child and the 
answer of any parent. 

But how can such specific answers to prayer 
comport with the regularity of Providence and 
the government of the world by appointed laws? 
Unquestionably this is one of the deep secrets 
passing our limited knowledge, and belonging 
to the Infinite Mind. But it is no deeper, nor 
harder to reconcile, than a hundred other facts in 
the Divine economy, which yet we must admit, 
or deny sense and faith both; such, for example, 
as the fact that we are all free to choose how we 
shall act, and yet are completely bound in the 
hands of Omnipotence; that God is Almighty 
and all-good, yet leaves His children liberty to 
do wrong. The balance of these two forces — 
Law and Liberty — is the wonder of the universe. 
Before we pray, He is Love itself; yet He hears 
the prayer, and sends a blessing that could not 
have come without. 

The mode of the answer rests with God. If 
He sees it will strengthen faith and fulfil His 
will, He may answer it directly, according to the 


THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT 103 

form of the request. If He sees that this would 
encourage worldly-mindedness, or hinder any 
of His broader purposes, He will send a secret 
response into the heart. One thing we may 
always know beforehand; if the earthly advan¬ 
tage holds a higher place in our desires than 
spiritual purity or God’s truth, it is no prayer 
of faith, and even for our own sakes we must be 
denied. Unless we feel, while we are asking, 
that we could cheerfully give up the things we 
ask for at God’s command, I suppose we are not 
in the true attitude of prayer. This must be 
that spirit of “believing” that Christ refers to 
when He says, “ Whatsoever ye ask believing , 
ye shall receive.” I have known devout persons 
to stand year after year in utter wonder that their 
prayers brought no visible return; yet the faith 
that came at last out of that trial, “more precious 
than gold that perisheth,” justified such patience 
by its splendor. 

For even while we wait, through all the breath¬ 
ings of our aspiration, from the first hesitating 
whisper of entreaty, on to the last strong syllable 
of praise when faith triumphs over the failing 
flesh, prayer is ever its own sufficing recompense. 
Its words react on your soul like a benediction. 
It puts the world at your feet. It makes all 


104 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


things yours while you are Christ’s and Christ 
is God’s. The spirit comes back from its seasons 
of converse with God into the strife of the world, 
its interior face radiant with a veil of glory like 
that Moses wore when he came down from the 
Mount. Over every day’s life let us write the 
twofold inscription: “Not slothful in business”: 
“Continuing instant in prayer.” 

And not for ourselves alone are these heavenly 
gifts attainable, but by one for another. Inter¬ 
cession— that too often neglected privilege of 
prayer — is the divinest gift of friendship. By- 
its celestial ministry, conquering all distances, 
the thoughts of separated spirits meet in God. 
When patient love, in its reserve or its baffled 
hope, can do no more, it can ask for all it loves 
the love of Christ. When ingratitude makes 
self-sacrifice itself helpless, and repulses all ten¬ 
derness with hate, or with unconcern almost as 
torturing, prayer can still watch and guard and 
supplicate and weep, and God counts its tears. 
Mothers for their erring sons; sisters for their 
falling brothers; companions for each other; all 
souls for all souls, — prayer is their sure refuge, 
the one office of faith and affection that no indif¬ 
ference can deny. 


THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT 


105 

I struggle across the billowy sea 

To the Home-of-the-Heart where I would be; 

Let me enter the Haven calm and fair, 

But let my beloved be also there! 

One by one 

Let them greet the Sun 

In the far-off Land which Thy sorrows won. . . . 

He giveth us peace at the last, they say, 

And more than all for which love can pray; 

Will He send a sweet Angel to say to me: 

“Go in peace to the Land of the joyful and free; 

For God hath given this day to thee 
The souls thou hast prayed for steadfastly? 

“And some shall enter the Haven wide, 

Full-sail, on the breast of a glorious tide; 

And some shall come 
To our golden Home 
Sore battered and spent from an angry sea; 

But thy heart shall count them, one by one, 

And leap for joy as they greet the Sun, 

Till God has gathered them all to thee.” 

Stretch forth, O Lord, the wings of Thy love over my kindred 
and friends. Grant unto them health of body and mind; that 
they may love Thee with all their strength, and with perfect 
affection fulfil all Thy holy will. Especially do I beseech Thee 

to have mercy upon Thy servant-, and guide him into the 

way of everlasting life; that by Thy grace he may desire what 
pleases Thee, and with all power may perform it: Through 
Christ our blessed Lord and Saviour. Amen. 


0@ontiap after tfte CftirO SuitDap 

With good will doing service as to the Lord, and not to men. 
— Ephes., vi., 7. 

The “service” mentioned by the Apostle here 
is taken as the type and example of all the work 
that is done in the world. It is in itself servant- 
work, having the fewest natural accompaniments 
to cheer and relieve it, the least exhilaration of 
hope or stimulus of ambition. It may be sheer 
drudgery. It is dependent, exposed, unprivi¬ 
leged. It is uncertain because it is hired, some¬ 
times menial, despised, unpaid. 

Here, then, we are dealing with that vast, com¬ 
mon condition of mankind, “service,” in its 
hardest form. Can it be elevated ? Is there 
any power that can transfigure task-work — 
hand-work or brain-work — turning bondmen 
into freemen, a grinding necessity into a joyful 
liberty ? 

The only answer is that given by authority of 
the Master-Workman of all the world, in the 
words of an Apostle who knew the Master’s 


MONDAY AFTER THE THIRD SUNDAY 107 

mind and had caught His spirit, who wrought 
with His hands at tent-making while he preached 
the Gospel of a universal and unconquerable 
commonwealth. He puts it into four plain words: 
“Doing service with good-will,” and he com¬ 
pletes his proclamation of human freedom when 
he opens a deeper secret and unfolds the motive, — 
“as to the Lord, and not to men.” 

This is an unreckoned element, an unappreci¬ 
ated and often disregarded power in all the right 
work that we do. It is not, strictly speaking, 
a part of the work itself. That, you know, has 
many shapes and methods, from the turning up 
of the soil to the painting of the Transfiguration, 
the organizing of a railroad or the shepherding 
of souls; and there are just as many sorts and 
measures of wages, and as many ways of starting, 
enlarging, or improving the service. 

Leave them all outwardly in their variety as 
they are: there is, nevertheless, one possible, 
secret, interior power, acting whenever a human 
heart and will can likewise act, of immense energy 
and singular beauty. It goes down underneath 
the visible things — the tools, books, processes 
— down to the roots of all employments, and 
changes them. It enters into all the activities of 
mind and body, and gladdens them. It is like 


io8 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


sap in the tree and sweetness in the fruit. It is 
animation in the workman’s body; it is tone in 
the music of the student’s voice. Separate from 
hand or foot or eye or brain, it is the spirit in 
which the work, whatever it is, is done. Accord¬ 
ing as this spirit is present or absent is the little¬ 
ness or the greatness, the tameness or the charm, 
the shame, perhaps, or the glory of that daily 
work. 

You are an employer. There is a piece of 
indoor or outdoor “service” which you want 
done. You inquire for a fit person to do it; the 
price is stipulated, the task is undertaken. What 
is it that was engaged in that agreement? Ac¬ 
tually it is only such a part of the faculty, strength, 
and skill of that person as is required for that 
service and can be bargained for; and it is no more. 
Yet there is in that person, and possible in his 
work, what money cannot buy, what all the com¬ 
mercial contrivance or finesse or maxims of the 
markets or the law take no knowledge of. With¬ 
out it, the service rendered may be legally sufficient 
and mechanically exact, but it will be languid, 
reluctant; it will be the eye-service of a man- 
pleaser. Every opportunity to hide a defect, to 
shorten time, to spare labor, will be used. 

St. Paul knew all about that; and he also knew 


MONDAY AFTER THE THIRD SUNDAY 109 

that when the finer and loftier spirit of Christ 
has gone into a man, no matter what his work 

is, a different kind of work will be done; different 
in thoroughness, in painstaking, in finish, in 
cheerfulness, different often in amount, — not 
with eye-service as men-pleasers, but doing the 
will of God from the heart; “ with good-will doing 
service as to the Lord, and not to men.” 

“From the heart.” That is something that 
comes from another origin than the physical or 
even the intellectual energy. It comes from 
above them both or from underneath them, — 
higher or deeper, as you please, — and it trans¬ 
forms and inspires the whole nature. It touches 
everything, and everything that it touches is the 
better for it. In your clerk, mechanic, domestic, 
physician, lawyer, or minister, you are glad to get 

it, but neither money nor fear will fetch it. It 
is one of the fruits of moral and spiritual regen¬ 
eration in the soul. 

Side by side you may contrast the two workers; 
that one a sullen slave, this one the cheerful 
master of the business in hand. One saleswoman 
so handles the merchandise of her employer that 
the purchase is a privilege; another is a hireling 
out to the ends of her fingers. There are school¬ 
masters whose teaching is like the hammer of a 


IIO 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


machine; there are schoolmasters whose opening 
of a language or a science to a pupil’s mind is 
like the letting in of morning light into a dark 
room. In every profession and pursuit where man 
works for man, there is eye-service,—thank God, 
there is also “ good-will with singleness of heart.” 
Carry the contrast up to a little higher ground, 
and you will find it to be so precisely where man 
works for God, and a Christian for Christ. And, 
therefore, all the more certainly and effectively, 
in the end, he labors for the benefit of men. 

Lord Jesus, by Thy precious wounded hands 
My hands Thou claimest, mine no more to be; 

They must be burden-lifters, loving bands 
To clasp Thy weak ones’ hands and hold for Thee. 

They must disdain no honest toil, and hold 
No barter with the evil; be no snare; 

Hate idle whiteness; shun all tainted gold; 

And not forget to clasp themselves in prayer. 

O Lord, grant me grace to will and to do whatever is pleas¬ 
ing to Thee and profitable to my own soul. Thou alone knowest 
whether my working day shall be long or short; let it be long 
enough, I beseech Thee, to bring all good work to a good end, 
and short enough to finish with my ability to do good work. 
For Thy Name’s sake, blot out all my sins of wilful idleness, 
and strengthen me to do hereafter only such work as shall abide 
before Thee, in the day when the fire shall try every man’s 
work of what sort it is. Amen. 


CuesDap after t&e CfrirD Suntiap 

Go, stand and speak ... to the people all the words of 
this life. — Acts, v., 20. 

The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you. — St. Luke, 
x., 11. 


In common speech we say “this life” when 
we mean the life we are living now, in distinction 
from a life coming after this. Scripture some¬ 
times uses the language in that way, but not so 
here. By “this life” is meant what people are 
apt to call “the other life”; only it is not thrown 
forward into the future, nor stripped of reality 
by separating it from the scenes we move in every 
day. It is not born of the will of the flesh, and 
yet the body is its natural organ and instrument. 
It dwells in mortal houses and conducts mortal 
business; and yet the touch of mortality is never 
on its pulse or movement. It is the best neighbor, 
the best citizen, trader, mechanic, or visitor, on 
the streets; and yet it walks utterly free of the 
rules, the fashions, and the traditions of human 
society. And it has this marvelous property, 
that death has no power over it, but liberates it 


112 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


into grander action, transfigures it into more per¬ 
fect beauty. This is what the voice of the Spirit, 
speaking in the text, meant by “this life.” 

What, then, is the substance of that recovering 
and regenerating reality — this life? 

Right in the midst of this present, visible sys¬ 
tem of things which we call “our world,” there 
is another system of things, just as real, equally 
present, equally near. It is made up of spiritual 
persons and forces, and of actual transactions. 
Make only a slight effort, and you can at least 
conceive of it in your minds. The more you 
think of it, the more distinct it becomes. It has 
laws of living, and millions of people live in them. 
Flesh and blood are not wanting to it, for the 
Head of it all, out of whom it all comes, has had 
His place in history, as truly man as any man on 
earth; and countless wise and strong persons 
know whereof they speak when they say that they 
walk through all dark and distressing places by 
putting their hands in His. It is as tangible as 
the food on our tables; indeed it has a Table of 
its own, and food upon it, and it feeds its children 
with its Master’s life. The New Testament’s 
name for it is The Kingdom of Heaven on the 
earth. 

Now, to believe in this as an abstract thing, or 


TUESDAY AFTER THE THIRD SUNDAY 113 

a mere Biblical thing, lying far off, where we 
can go and look it up if any particular circum¬ 
stance should move us to do so, is not uncommon. 
The kingdom of God, on the contrary, has come; 
the great Love of God, the infinite Charity of 
Christ, the powers of the world to come, the 
immediate judgment, the great white Throne, 
are here, close at hand, in the heart of the town, 
pressing upon you. That is what the angel at 
the prison told the Apostles to go, stand in the 
temple and preach. 

Jesus Christ said “this life.” He was upon 
the earth, to be sure, but it was to be Himself a 
second Adam, to make a new creation, and to 
give His people life, if they would take it. Their 
willingness to take it would be faith. But the 
faith would not love them. He, in His holy 
power, would love them, if their faith would let 
Him. “I stand at the door and knock,” He says, 
that He may bring this life in. This is the one 
certain thing, this life in Him. He unfolded it 
and sent it abroad, in ministries, gifts, ordina¬ 
tions, the Word, sacraments, tongues of fire, 
secret inspirations in the heart. When He went 
away, He left His Church behind, His Body, to 
use the authority He gave it, — a teacher, wit¬ 
ness, guide, benefactor. He promised to con- 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


11.4 

tinue to give gifts unto men, and draw men unto 
Him, through this supernatural energy working 
on the earth — “this life.” 

We have been calling this life supernatural. 
By this is meant that it is governed by laws and 
that it acts on us in ways which we apprehend 
only by the spiritual part in us. We speak of 
the signs of their manifestation as “miracles.” 
So they are to us. And so our Lord’s path while 
He was here, and the beginnings of His Church, 
were all set about with miracles. Things were 
continually taking place not to be accounted for 
by any ordinary explanation. But, as attending 
a Divine and unprecedented Person, they were 
really the most natural things conceivable. What 
more reasonable than that transcendent Life 
should break forth wonderfully; that the skies 
open for it, angels accompany it, the elements 
yield to it, the sick rise up and walk, the doors 
of prisons and of graves open before it? These 
are the most natural workings of His power, who 
always makes the lower world minister to the 
higher. And the Church is a supernatural system, 
coming forth out of Christ, as He declares; yet 
clothed in a form as we are, organized into a 
family, acting through institutions and ordinances, 
“ manifest in the flesh, seen of angels, preached 


TUESDAY AFTER THE THIRD SUNDAY 115 

unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, re¬ 
ceived up into glory,” — the practical and work¬ 
ing Body of “this life ,? on earth. 

This being the case, it is not strictly correct to 
speak of the worldly life as “visible” and the 
Christ-life as “invisible.” The worldly life, just 
so far as it is selfish, vicious, polluted, has its 
springs, too, out of sight. The Christ-life, though 
springing from many unseen fountains, in “the 
mystery of godliness,” and having its seat always 
in the secret places of the heart, nevertheless 
goes forth in its redeeming work among men — 
a visible Fact. 

Finally, of your own personal heart. Life 
and death are contending there. When Bunyan 
had told his dream of the City of Destruction 
and the City of God, he waked and saw them 
both in the heart of man. Perhaps you have 
a secret in your memory which you would not 
keep in memory if you could help it, or you are 
tempted by evil appetites, or perplexed, or worn 
with a domestic cross, or stricken with conscience, 
or dissatisfied. Try no more to puzzle the way 
out yourself. Set the divine, supernatural powers, 
once grafted into your baptized soul, over against 
the senses, against self, against unbelief. Get 
yourself on the side of the Almighty. Work in 


n6 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


and for the Kingdom of His Love, and according 
to its laws. If you are not in it, come in! If 
you are, then let the life of Christ, its Head, flow 
in and reign in you, purifying you, and making 
you a child of God. 

O Life of life, flow in! 

Expel this death of sin; 

Awake true life within; 

O Life of life, flow in! 

O Love of love, pour in! 

This hateful root of sin 
Pluck up, destroy within; 

O Love of love, pour in! 

O Heavenly Father, who hast sent to us Thine own dear 
Son, not only to die for our sins, but also to be the model and 
example of a holy life; give me grace so to study that model 
and follow that example, that I may grow in likeness to Him, 
according to Thy holy will: through the same Jesus Christ 
our Saviour and Lord. Amen. 


GOeDnesOap after the CtnrO Suntiap 

That ye may approve things that are excellent.— Phil., 
i., io. 


Each one of us lives in his place as in a school, 
where all the time something is offered to be 
received, in order that, being little and weak, 
he may grow; that, being a pupil, he may learn; 
that, being a learner, he may be a doer, — a 
creature made and meant not only to exist a while, 
but to know, to think, to act, and so to live. 

This marvelous, inarticulate, but unceasing 
school of life is as much an appointment of God 
as any volume or any miracle. We are set into 
it in varied conditions and unequal surroundings, 
to see and be seen, to try and be tried, to work 
and to be wrought upon, to judge and be judged, 
to make our choice, to “ approve things that are 
excellent,” to detest, hate, despise, trample down 
what is not excellent, what we know God hates. 

And there is a very tremendous and startling 
operation of this law of God. What we so see 
and feel acts back on ourselves. One way or 


Ii8 THE DAYS OF LENT 

another, beyond our will, we are the better for it 
or the worse. In spite of any effort or resolve, 
in spite of sympathy or resistance, in spite of 
indifference or forgetfulness, the choice never 
leaves us as we were. If we assent to evil, the 
assent weakens us, contaminates us, and lets us 
down; if we resist, the conflict strengthens, braces, 
invigorates us and lifts us up. Every part of 
your moral life is sensitive. What touches the 
soul leaves its mark. Not only is “the dyer’s 
hand subdued to the thing it works in,” but 
inclinations and tasks, likes and dislikes, propen¬ 
sities and instincts, are so swayed and bent up¬ 
ward or downward, — downward by things that 
are mean and unclean, upward by things that are 
lofty, pure, bright, “the things that are so excel¬ 
lent” that they must be approved, and be approved 
because they are “excellent.” The power is 
more than the power of imitation, admiration, 
or even of example. It is the finer and subtler 
power of heart upon heart, life upon life, one 
soul upon another soul, one will upon another 
will, in the workmanship and mystery and grace 
of God. 

In our mixed society the choosing must be 
incessant; and in any line the pattern or standard, 
if you are sincere, can be no other than the best. 


WEDNESDAY AFTER THE THIRD SUNDAY 119 

Suppose that the quality you feel yourself to be 
most lacking in, or which you most want, is moral 
courage. Having consulted two of the three 
principal sources of light and strength — your 
conscience and your Bible — you turn to the 
third, not far off—society, its people, its fashions, 
its talk. ... It is a human world, a human 
neighborhood, city, or village. Small and ob¬ 
scure as it may be, it is not insignificant; there is 
room in it for the play and the strife of mortal 
minds, passions, interests, appetites; room enough 
for things “excellent” and for things ignoble 
and shameful. It is for you , and you are there 
in it, with your conscience, your inner light, 
lighted in you when you were born, and shining 
or clouded ever since. You must “approve” 
or disapprove. Hide it as you will, shirk it, 
choke it down, parley with it, deny it, there it is. 
To the men, the women and children there, you 
may look as if you neither saw nor heard. All 
the same, you did approve or you did disapprove; 
and a secret effect stole back upon you. iFor the 
“things excellent” you are the better; for the 
things evil you are the worsep 

Inseparable from Revelation and Conscience, 
as an educator for the life everlasting, is this third 
witness of that life — the living world. There 


120 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


are “ things that are excellent,” men that are just, 
women that are unworldly, children that are 
lovely, actions that are noble, voices that quicken, 
inspire, and comfort. There, too, are things 
without honor, or beauty, or purity, or any gleam 
of the glory that is immortal. Which you choose, 
you will have. 

Choose, then, that which Christ’s apostles 
and saints have chosen. Long for it so heartily 
that only the Bread of Heaven can feed the 
hunger, and only the Water of Life can quench 
the thirst, and it will be given to you. “Blessed 
are they that hunger and thirst after righteous¬ 
ness, for they shall be filled.” 

We are proclaimed even against our wills; 

If we are silent, then our silence speaks; 

Our secret liking through our neighbor thrills; 

Our secret hatred through our closed lips leaks; 

I think no man can make a lie hold good, 

One way or other truth is understood. 

The still, sweet influence of a life of prayer 

Quickens their hearts who seldom bow the knee; 

So come fresh draughts of living inland air 
To weary, homesick men far out at sea: 

Acquaint thyself with God, O man, and lo! 

His light shall, like a garment, round thee flow. 

Grant me, O Lord, to know that which is worth knowing, 
to love that which is worth loving; to praise that which pleaseth 


WEDNESDAY AFTER THE THIRD SUNDAY 12 1 


Thee most, to esteem that highly which to Thee is precious: 
that I may not only approve these excellent things with my 

mind, but love them with my heart, and strive to make them 

mine, so that I may be more truly Thine: which I beg for Christ’s 
sake. Amen. 


CimrsOag after tfce Cfji'rD %>unDag 

Search the Scriptures. — John, v., 39. 

For this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. 
— I Thess., v., 18. 

Here and there, trying to live a Christian life, 
we get help from some short, simple, but weighty 
saying of Scripture, that sums up the law of the 
whole matter on the practical side, and can be 
readily remembered, such as these: “What doth 
thy Lord require of thee but to do justly, to love 
mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” 
“He that followeth me shall have the light of 
life”; “If ye love me, keep my commandments”; 
“He that doeth God’s will shall know of the 
doctrine”; and here, “This is the will of God 
concerning you.” From this last, as from the 
others, we learn the truth, personal on God’s 
part, and personal to ourselves; God has a will, 
uses it, and with it He reaches us and controls 
us, every one. 

This precise truth, this fact, — for it is not only 
a truth for the mind, but a definite fact “con- 


122 


THURSDAY AFTER THE THIRD SUNDAY 123 

cerning” every part of us, — I put before you 
now, not only because it is a suitable topic for 
Lent, nor because in importance it transcends 
other important matters, but because there is an 
increasing neglect of it and silence about it, which 
is a danger to religion, to worship, to prayer. 
When the will of God is dropped out of human 
affairs, when the name of God disappears from 
common talk and from current publications in 
all kinds and subjects of a copious literature, 
then whoever has a title to speak for Christ at 
all needs no apology for speaking as he prays: 
“ Hallowed be Thy name. Thy will be done 
on earth.” 

One may perhaps ask: “But how am I to know 
just what God’s will is? He is far greater and 
wiser than I; He dwells on high, out of sight. 
How shall I know?” 

The answer to your question is not far off. 
As He has said, first of all, “It is in thy heart 
and in thy mouth, that thou mayest do it.” He 
who made us provided avenues for letting into 
the soul a sense of a Divine Presence and Power, 
a sense of a Personal Will above our own will, — 
faint, perhaps, uncertain, uninstructed, fallible, 
without the guidance of Revelation answering 
to our faith, yet there is that glimmer of natural 


124 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


light “ lighting every man that cometh into the 
world.” 

Into this prepared place shines the Revelation, 
that “glory in the face of Jesus Christ,” of which 
the knowledge of God and the Will of God are 
the singular brightness. There is a Book, the 
Book of books, the world’s Book, mankind’s 
Book. From the first sentence to the last, with 
every sort of composition known to literary inven¬ 
tion, in more than eleven hundred chapters, with 
a history of its own as marvelous as any miracle 
it records, it is the undying declaration of the 
Will of God for man. That Divine Name stamps 
its pages with the signet of an authority above 
all the decrees of councils and courts. To it 
they all appeal. Portions of it that seem at first 
less closely united to its spiritual purpose and 
import are found to be essential elements in its 
integrity and unity. Open its pages anywhere, 
at the Pentateuch or the Apocalypse, at Parable 
or Psalm, biography or epistle, prophecy or evan¬ 
gel, it proclaims to you “the Will of God concern¬ 
ing you,” the Will of the One Giver, Keeper, 
Master, Witness, Judge, of every life, of your 
life and my life; at once a Father to be loved, 
and a Saviour to be trusted. 

And what is it that the mighty chorus pro- 


THURSDAY AFTER THE THIRD SUNDAY 125 

claims but the cry of the Voice which cried to 
Isaiah: “Hear, 0 heavens, and give ear, O earth, 
for the Lord hath spoken. Say ye to the righteous 
that it shall be well with him. Say ye to the 
wicked that it shall be ill with him.” Through 
these ages, everywhere, works the increasing 
power which is not only a law, but a Personal 
Will: “This is the will of God concerning you.” 

The Bible answers to the soul. History an¬ 
swers to the Bible. The human world around 
us answers to history. The Kingdom that is 
ever coming where Christ comes, has its pledge 
and prophecy in the working of an irresistible 
Will. This universe is at unity in itself because 
the Lord our God is One Lord. 

We come, therefore, to this: Our religion, as 
a genuine and healthy thing, needs chiefly that 
God, the personal God, should be heard and felt 
and manifest in our thoughts, on our tongues, 
and so honestly in our lives. That will be the 
true Christian people, the true Christian man or 
woman, where the Name is freely, naturally, 
reverently, heartily spoken, “which is above 
every name,” yet is the name of the nearest, 
dearest Friend. Before outward worship, before 
the Creed itself, must be the heart’s faith and the 
heart’s prayer: “Thy will, O God, be done.” 


126 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


To know that will, “ search the Scriptures.” 
To know the heart and soul of that system which 
we call “Christianity,” turn to that Book. 

From some old well of life they flow, — 

The words my being fill, — 

“Of Me that man the truth shall know, 

Who does the Father’s will.” 

What is His will ? — that I may go 
And do it in the hope 

That light will rise and spread and grow 
As deed enlarges scope. 

I read and read the Ancient Tale; 

A gracious Form I mark 

* Love was His very being’s root, 

And healing was its flower; 

Love only, — root and flower and fruit, 

Beginning, end and power. 

As in a living well I gaze, 

Kneeling upon its brink; 

What are the wondrous words He says? 

What did the one Man think? 

I find His heart was all above, 

Obedience His one thought; 

Reposing in His Father’s love, 

His will alone He sought. 

O Heavenly Father, who in Thy boundless love hast given 
Thy dear Son to be our Light and Guide, help me to follow 


THURSDAY AFTER THE THIRD SUNDAY 127 


Him in strength, in truth, in obedience, in a heavenly temper; 
that I may glorify Thee both in word and deed on earth, and 
attain at last to Thy heavenly kingdom, through the same Jesus 
Christ our Lord. Amen. 


jFu'Dag after t&e C trite %>uttDap 

Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou dis¬ 
quieted within me? — Ps., xlii., n. 

One of the strange things about the mind is 
that a man can hold a dialogue with himself. 
You can take yourself apart into two individuals, 
one talking with the other, questioning and an¬ 
swering the other; and yet there are not two 
persons, but only one. You may say that it is 
only a trick of language, but that gives us no 
help, because we all know that what King David 
says is something that we all do and feel; and 
we read the forty-second Psalm, with its pathetic 
beauty of the heart panting after the water- 
brooks and the little hill of Hermon, and the 
tears of the royal penitent day and night, — we 
read it all straight on, comprehending it, taking 
it in as we do the simplest and commonest state¬ 
ment of a fact. He is not speaking as a king, 
or a warrior, or a philosopher, or a poet, but as a 
man; and what he says is not only a cry coming 
out of the deepest distress and longing in him, but 
it is with most of us as real as anything we ever 

128 


FRIDAY AFTER THE THIRD SUNDAY 129 

feel, though we should not be able to put it into 
words as clear and striking as his. “Why art 
thou so cast down,” — thou, not I exactly, but 
another; and yet not another, but myself, — thou, 
“O my soul; and why art thou so disquieted 
within me?” 

First, we must take note why it is that this 
man is cast down, what he is disquieted about. 
It is something pertaining to himself; not other 
men’s troubles or other men’s sins; at other 
times he has sympathy for them, as all good men 
have, but not just now. And with himself it 
was not poverty, misfortune, enemies, sickness, 
or any physical pain. He had another cause of 
depression. The precise point before us is that 
this other shadow darkens a man’s daylight and 
disturbs his peace. What he feels and cries out 
for is a different part of him — the spirit in him. 
He knows now that he has more than a body of 
flesh and nerves, a body to be clothed and fed. 
Deeper than that, he sees that he has more than 
the intellectual faculty which thinks and learns 
and remembers, and does business and makes 
plans. He has come to know that he has a soul; 
that it belongs to him, is a part of him, and really 
the chief part of him. Something is the matter 
with that. What is it? 


130 THE DAYS OF LENT 

Now that is just what takes place — that dis¬ 
covery, that awakening — when a man, however 
respectable or intelligent he has been as a citizen 
or neighbor, answers to the voice of the Gospel. 
I am sure that there are thousands, even in early 
manhood and womanhood, who have times, 
seasons, hours,—moments at least,—not talked 
about, not half understood by themselves, not 
dealt with in any way, times of disquiet in heart, 
of discontent with themselves, with what they 
have been and what they are. That sharp sense 
of something wanting, of some weakness, failure, 
littleness, emptiness, is God’s way of personally 
dealing with you, no matter what brings it, — a 
disappointment, a sickness, a sermon, a Lenten 
season, something that you read, a hidden touch 
from above. Yes, you have a soul; and now you 
ask why it is cast down and disquieted within 
you. 

The question takes various shapes: “Has this 
life that I am living, in its ordinary drift of busi¬ 
ness and amusement, any definite drift or aim? 
What am I living for? Am I living for any pur¬ 
pose whatever other than my immediate and 
passing interest? Is it really a serious thing to 
live, taking the world about me as it is, and 
thinking for what the world and I were made? 


FRIDAY AFTER THE THIRD SUNDAY 131 

'Good desires/ I know, have been in my mind, 
but I took little pains to bring them to good effect. 
Generous impulses have sprung up, but the old 
selfish habits stifled them. I was ashamed for 
a little while, of my petulance, or meanness, or 
vanity, or irreverence, but the shame wore off 
and I was as bad as before. Something is wanting, 
is a lack in me, — some steadying, constant, 
consistent power over me or under me, holding 
me back or guiding me on. All that better part, 
hitherto, was short-lived, volatile, not trustworthy, 
not righteous or even honorable. That was not 
penitence. That was not principle. Christian 
manhood or womanhood is not made or kept in 
that faithless fashion. When I look back on it 
all, no wonder, O my soul, that thou art cast 
down; and when I look on before, no wonder 
thou art disquieted within me!” 

The man who uttered this sharp cry knew it 
and felt it all. He went into that dark place, 
into the depth of it, and came out of it. How 
did he come out of it? Exactly as we shall, if 
we do come out of it. Not by cowardice, or 
pride, or narcotics; not by physics or metaphysics; 
not by studying scientifically the "law of nature.” 
He got out of it just as every downcast and dis¬ 
quieted soul has got out of it from his day to this. 


132 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


“O my God, I will remember Thee! Deep may 
call unto deep, and all the water-spouts at black 
midnight may go over me. But the voice is my 
Father’s voice: The Lord will command His 
loving-kindness in the night season/ and my 
prayer shall be unto Him, the God of my life.” 

How simple the way out is, as simple and still 
as the sunrise! Yesterday? — that is forgiven, 
because the Father must forgive. To-morrow ? — 
that is safe with Him. You have learnt that peace 
which passeth this world’s understanding. You 
are satisfied with the satisfaction of your Father’s 
House, at your Saviour’s table, and the fellow¬ 
ship of the Spirit, which no alarm can disturb. 


A heavy heart, if ever heart was heavy, 

I offer Thee this heavy heart of me: 

Are such as this the hearts Thou art fain to levy 
To do and dare for Thee, to bleed for Thee? 

Ah, blessed heaviness if such they be! 

Lifted to Thee, my heart weighs not so heavy, 

It leaps and lightens, lifted up to Thee; 

It sings; it hopes to sing amid the bevy 
Of thousand, thousand choirs that sing, and see 
Thy face, — me loving, for Thou lovest me. 


In Thee, therefore, O God, I place my whole hope and 
refuge; on Thee I rest in my tribulation and anguish. For 
many friends cannot profit, nor strong helpers assist, nor the 


FRIDAY AFTER THE THIRD SUNDAY 133 


books of the learned afford comfort, nor any precious sub¬ 
stance deliver, nor any place give shelter; unless Thou Thy¬ 
self dost assist, help, strengthen, console, instruct and guard 
me. Do Thou protect and keep my soul amidst the many 
dangers of this corruptible life; and by Thy grace accompany¬ 
ing direct me along the way of peace to the everlasting life. 
Amen. 


©aturflap after t&e C&ftO ^unDap 

Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I 
say? 

Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings, and 
doeth them, I will show you to whom he is like. — St.. Luke, 
vi., 46, 47. 

Christ goes immediately on with His com¬ 
parison. There are two men, alike in this, that 
they both build houses. For anything that 
appears, the houses they build are alike in size 
and strength, and in all that general outside form 
of life which we call “ appearances.” The differ¬ 
ence between them is in what they are built on. 
Though the earth abides, air and water are less 
uniform. The air moves, and there is a storm. 
The waters collect, and there is a flood. Then 
it becomes an immensely practical question: 
What is underneath the building, sand or rock ? 

King Solomon had seen a great many hollow 
men, prosperous but rotten. He says: “The 
whirlwind passeth, and they are gone; but the 
righteous is an everlasting foundation.” What 
he knew by experience, the Saviour knew by a 
134 


SATURDAY AFTER THE THIRD SUNDAY 135 

heavenly instinct. Both speak of foundations 
and tempests. Under these images both warn 
us of contrasts in character. 

“Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the 
things that I say?” This is not meant to dis¬ 
courage prayer, or calling on God. It is to con¬ 
trast a religious tongue with a religion of the 
whole man — sand with rock. Obedience to 
the whole system of Christianity, visible worship 
included, makes a Christian. We delude our 
selves if we think we can be Christians by saying 
that we are. When our Lord came on earth, the 
popular religious teachers — the Rabbis — had 
come to reckon religion not from within outward, 
but from the surface inward. The disciples 
brought something of the effect of this education 
to Christ, and He had to break it, root and branch. 
That accounts for His strong language to the 
Pharisees. In a system like that every sweet 
drop of true religion is dried up. 

But Christians now Judaize in the same way. 
A Christian reputation is often counted as a con¬ 
venience, a protection, a passport. It is easier 
to say Lord, Lord, twenty times a day than to do 
the things which the Lord says. May not a little 
negligence here, and a little overreaching there, 
and a modified lie yonder, be pardonable, seeing 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


136 

that so much has been done for Christ as to 
call Him “Lord”? But think! — what name 
is it that is made to screen them? It is the 
Name of Him who did no sin, who hated it 
so utterly that He would rather die than have 
the shadow of a stain of it on His soul, — nay, 
rather than to see its spot on yours or mine. 

Another delusion is that we can be saved, or 
can be Christians, by Christian feelings. This 
delusion differs from the other in that a religion 
of the tongue may possibly be heartless, but a 
lively religious enthusiasm is, as long as it lasts, 
perfectly and sometimes intensely sincere. It is 
sincere with the sincerity of Hazael, who said: 
“Is thy servant a dog that he should do this 
thing?” and presently after did it. It is the 
sincerity of the servant who said: “I go, sir,” 
and went not. It is sentimentalism handling 
the Gospel, and its two hands are feeling and 
fancy. No careful mind will deny that both 
emotion and imagination play a large and lawful 
part in religion; for religion is a large thing, and 
enlists every faculty and touches every interest of 
mankind. But feeling alone, or fancy alone, or 
both together, never do much to forward char¬ 
acter. They are to conscience, to principle, to 
the serious and steady and practical working force 


SATURDAY AFTER THE THIRD SUNDAY 137 

in a Christian, as sand to rock. They are not 
good against whirlwinds, or sudden floods, or 
violent temptations; they build no house on a 
firm, uncompromising foundation. 

Righteousness, — nothing else, — righteousness 
which is an “ everlasting foundation,” is the 
test of a disciple. The Son of God never 
favored any other. “Why call ye me, Lord, 
Lord, and do not the things that I say?” Doing 
is the criterion. Whirlwinds and tempests will 
bring us down to the rock at last. “Be ye doers 
of the word, and not hearers only,” writes St. 
James for all time, and for every individual. He 
who will “do justly” by all men, even his enemies; 
love mercy, and show it to all that suffer, or are 
weak and troubled; walk humbly, devoutly, 
obediently with God; stand by his word, though 
all bonds and notes are burnt; take all risks and 
bear all losses bravely, for duty’s sake, clear 
through to the end, —he is your “man of God,” 
your Christian, your saint. Enmity will not 
daunt him; poverty will not make Him poor; 
winds will not blow Him away; floods will not 
upset Him, — he is a “foundation.” God knows 
His own, and keeps them. 

“Come to Jesus!” Let all that is contained 
in that affecting call be pondered, explained, 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


138 

and set in its true order, and it is the very essence 
and summary of the Gospel message. Still, the 
form of words is easily abused. The Lord 
Himself appears to have foreseen the danger. 
“Whoseover cometh to me,” He says, “and 
heareth my words,” and not only hears them, 
but “doeth them,” — puts them into solid prac¬ 
tice, — “I will show you to whom he is like” — 
the builder on the rock. 

That is, after “coming to Jesus,” there is 
something more. There is abiding in Him; 
there is instruction in Christian knowledge; there 
is training in a holy life; there is discipline, self- 
control, self-denial, gradual growth in every kind 
of lovely temper and just dealing and blameless 
conversation. The first step is not all the steps. 
A rush of feeling is not piety, a joyous transport 
is not salvation. In short, righteousness — char¬ 
acter — is what feeling and transport and song 
and ceremony and sacrament are all for. Char¬ 
acter is salvation; without it the rest is sand. 

Even exactness and abundance in doctrinal 
information is not the living power of the religion 
of Christ. Doctrine is a bulwark of the faith, 
yet not its life; walls, but not foundation; the 
frame-work of the Fold, not the Shepherd giving 
His life-blood for the sheep. Doctrine needs 


SATURDAY AFTER THE THIRD SUNDAY 139 

to be melted into a vital stream and circulated 
through the veins; feeling needs to be hardened 
and solidified into sinew and bone; the will needs 
to be braced like ribs of steel and set fast for 
righteousness: — and then you will have some¬ 
thing like the growing stature of perfectness in 
Christ. 

On the eastern bank of the Rhine, just oppo¬ 
site to its meeting with the Moselle, stands an 
immense and illustrious fortress, protecting the 
Prussian empire on the west. When the Duke 
of Wellington inspected this fortress, with its 
impregnable walls, its huge magazines, its well 
of waters that cannot be cut off, he said: “This 
fortress can never be reduced with balls of iron; 
the balls must be of gold that can carry it.” They 
call it “Ehrenbreitstein,” — broad stone of honor. 

Praise be to Him who was, and is, and is to 
come, that in this restless and fluctuating age 
we have an Ehrenbreitstein! That is Character! 
In almost every little community of His children, 
in city or village, or hamlet of the hills, there 
is some strong-built man on whom the people 
lean, and are not disappointed of their trust. 
A righteous manhood, or womanhood, refreshed 
by the Spirit from on high, — that is abiding. 
The stream rises, the flood beats vehemently 


140 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


upon the house, but cannot shake it; for it is 
founded on a Rock. 

Pride builds her house upon the sand; 

Ambition treads the spider’s stair; 

On whatsoever things will stand 
Set Thou my feet, and keep them there! 

In spite of sneer or threat, in spite 
Of burdens grievous hard to bear, 

To whatsoever things are right 

Set Thou my hand, and keep it there! 

The richest joys of earth are poor; 

The fairest things are oft unfair; 

On what is strong and brave and pure 
Set Thou my heart, and keep it there! 

O Lord, of Thy goodness, grant that I build not any hope 
or faith on earthly sand, but place all my trust and hope in 
Thee, the Everlasting Rock; that so my hope and faith may 
never be reproved in Thy sight; through Christ our Lord. Amen. 


Jfouttl) ©unDap fn lent 

I know whom I have believed. — 2 Tim., i., 12. 


St. Paul knows and he believes. He uses in 
his religion two powers, or faculties, belonging 
to every man. We call the fruits of these two 
common human powers “knowledge” and “faith.” 
We get hold of religious truth in two ways. Lan¬ 
guage, or some other sign, expresses it, speaking 
to our understanding, and we take it in or not, 
from Scripture, or symbol, or sermon, — accord¬ 
ing as we are in a state to receive it; or, as Christ 
so often said, as we have “ears to hear.” But 
beneath or behind that way is another, — that 
inward ear, that spiritual sense, which receives 
spiritual things. If this voice from above finds 
us ready, our hearts open, and takes hold of us, 
and becomes real to us and a part of our lives, 
we believe. 

If you look through the New Testament 
Epistles, you find no trace of a Gospel without 
intelligence. Knowledge is put alongside of 
charity and piety among Christian graces and 


142 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


forces. They bid disciples abound in knowl¬ 
edge as in love; they rebuke a zeal which is “not 
according to knowledge.” But there is another 
power, inborn, natural, universal, just as the 
understanding is; different only in its objects, 
its way of working and its fruits in character. 
It is that in us by which we believe. The books 
may call it “intuition”; St. Paul calls it “spiritual 
discernment.” It is universal, but, like our 
other gifts, it varies in degrees and proportions. 
It is found abundantly in men and women the 
most intellectual. It is found, too, in those of 
slight culture and scanty education. We all use 
it outside of religion, every day of our active lives, 
in business, in housekeeping, in travel, in every 
plan we make for to-morrow. We find out people 
by it — what sort of persons they are. We find 
out truths not proved by our senses, or by mathe¬ 
matics or reasoning. We do our noblest works, 
we reap our widest harvests, by trust. And we 
get spiritual light, honor, peace, victory, in no 
other way. 

It is remarkable that the triumph of the Cross 
over nations and ages was made not against, but 
independently of, schools and their systems. 
This does not mean that Christ despised them, 
or that His religion was not to take intellectual 


FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT 143 

culture into its sympathy, or was not to count 
literature and art and science among its blessings. 
It does not mean that fellowship with Christ in His 
kingdom is not dependent on the endorsement of 
any system or name. It does mean that the 
fruits of the Spirit will be found, rich and fair, in 
peasants and working men as often as in profes¬ 
sors and speech-makers. It means that char¬ 
acter is not built in the brain. It means that the 
Church, in all her doing and teaching, is to use 
men’s knowledge for their faith, rather than to 
measure their faith by their knowledge. The 
more they know, the better; but if they are wise, 
they will.know first of all “Whom they believe.” 
For a long time two great systems of thought, 
with two scholastic masters, divided the thinking 
world. Abelard said: “I believe in order that 
I may know.” Anselm answered: “I know in 
order that I may believe.” Christ, Son of God 
and Son of man, says to the world: “If any man 
will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine.” 

We stand before this great affirmation of the 
great Apostle, all of us alike; and what are we 
all of us alike? Not very wise, at the wisest; 
not very strong, at the strongest; not far-sighted 
or deep-sighted; not much like conquerors, march¬ 
ing through life in triumph over its troubles, its 


144 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


trials, or its terrors; not one of us knowing even 
whether life itself shall last a day; not able to 
hold it fast against disease or death; every one 
of us having glimpses of a glory of character not 
attained; every one of us carrying some care or 
cross, waking up with it every morning and going 
to sleep — if we can — with it every night. 
Around us are clever books and bright magazines, 
social entertainments, play-houses and club rooms, 
streams of talk — speculations, theories, guesses; 
they salute us, pass by, and leave us as we were. 

Perhaps then you turn to One who is waiting 
for you. Your understanding tells you that He 
has been found — waiting for them all along — 
by men and women just like you, with just your 
weakness, your pain — uncounted millions of 
them, from the strong minds to the feeble; and 
from this mighty multitude comes the witness 
that He has satisfied them. There is also an 
inward witness. Its confident, undoubting, glad 
confession is, “‘I know whom I believe.’ The 
best powers of my thinking mind, the clearest 
vision of my believing and loving heart, agree. 
This is certainty.” 

The sons of knowledge bring their problems — 
problems of time, space, creation, birth, change, 
affinities, catastrophes — and they bid you tell 


FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT 145 

them how Christ and His Revelation explained 
them. You answer: “My Christ, God’s Son, 
every man’s Brother, every man’s Master, has 
opened to me a world of living realities which not 
one of all these questions can disturb or touch. 
Your problems are right problems, magnificent 
in their issues, worthy of your study, for they 
rise in the universe of God; but all of them, and 
all the universe of matter where they lie, are 
enfolded in this spiritual sphere, out of which 
my Lord has come, where He rules in light, 
where I shall see Him as He is; and He has come 
that He might at last reconcile the two worlds, 
to one another, that He might lead me to my 
Father. ‘I know whom I have believed.’” 

At last, sooner or later, there comes a closer, 
sharper trial. An unbidden guest comes to 
every house, never invited but entering and tarry¬ 
ing awhile, because sent there. It is personal 
sorrow. Whatever else is uncertain, it is certain 
that God will try not only every man’s work, but 
every man’s faith, out of which the work comes, 
“of what sort it is.” Personal sorrow is too 
much for our inventions, too pressing for our 
opinions, too subtle for our medicines. It must 
be a very sanguine philosophy that can expect 
to make grief cheerful. Humanity has tried it 


146 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


with all the varieties of stoic pride and the anodynes 
of pleasure since suffering began. It will be 
saying too much to say that Christian believers 
are always light-hearted, but it is safe to say that 
their peace is sure to be in proportion to their 
faith. If we fail in the victory that overcomes 
the world, it is because we fail in that to which 
the victory is promised. If we have little of “the 
peace which passeth understanding/’ it is be¬ 
cause we have so little of Christ: knowing more 
or less, we do not “know whom we believe.” 

Let us inquire, then: “What kind of faith is it 
that I have, — this thing that I call my religion ? 
Is it a religion to make me confident, to make 
me brave as nothing but certainty can, to stand 
by me when I am tempted to surrender principle 
to passion, or honor to meanness, or the Cross 
to the world? Is it a religion to help me say, 
like a child, when I am chafing at some provi¬ 
dence : 


“God never does, nor suffers to be done, 

But that which we should do if we could see 
The end of all events as well as He?” 

We have a familiar prayer that we may “die 
in the confidence of a certain faith.” God wants 
us just as much to live in the confidence of the 


FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT 


147 


same “certain faith” — at home, in trade, in 
society, in public or out of sight. His kingdom 
of righteousness and truth, justice and love, is 
here, on the earth. His tabernacle is with men. 

I say to thee — do thou repeat 
To the first man thou mayest meet — 

That he and we and all men move 
Under a canopy of love 
As broad as the blue sky above; 

That weary deserts we may tread, 

A dreary labyrinth may thread, 

Through dark ways underground be led; 

Yet if one Guide we will obey, 

The dreariest path, the darkest way, 

Shall issue out in heavenly day. 

And one thing further make him know, — 

That to believe these things are so, 

This firm faith never to forego, 

Despite of all that seems at strife 
With blessing, all with curses rife, — 

That this is blessing, this is life. 

I beseech Thee, O Lord, in Thy compassion to increase 
Thy faith in me; and because Thou never deniest the grace of 
Thy loving-kindness to Thy faithful servants, grant me there¬ 
fore so to trust in Thee, and with pure heart to seek Thy truth, 
that my faith may be steadfast against all adversities: For 
Christ’s sake. Amen. 


0@oitDap after t&e jFouttfj ©untrap 

The Spirit . . . helpeth our infirmities. — Rom., viii., 26. 

The Apostle is trying to make clear to Chris¬ 
tians that, in the great, hard, sharp struggle 
which we all have to keep up in our daily life, 
we need a helper out of ourselves, beyond ourselves, 
above ourselves. He sees a human brother — 
or it may be a woman — toiling, tugging, strain¬ 
ing to lift or carry a weight that is too heavy. 
Another Figure appears at the side of this fainting 
servant of the Law, places a shoulder under the 
load, steadies the staggering feet, shares the 
burden, “helps the infirmity.” 

This is a gospel: it is “glad tidings” to the 
personal heart. We hear of a “Gospel for all 
nations”; so it is, and it is also a Gospel for all 
houses, shops, roadways, and fields. Meant for 
man, it takes him as he is and wherever he is. 
Infirmity is born in him. Accordingly, infirmity 
is the first concern. Not the how , or the why , 
or the degree of it, but the fact. “Turn” is the 
prime command. “Return” is the captive’s 

148 


MONDAY AFTER THE FOURTH SUNDAY 149 

call. “Repent ye of your sins” is the cry of the 
Prophet, repeated by the Son of man, along the 
banks of the Jordan. 

But no wrong habit changes itself. Leopard’s 
spots have no self-bleaching virtue. Infirmity 
cannot be strong. You can cover it up, think of 
something else, excuse it, criticise it in other 
people; but manhood, womanhood, victory, the 
beauty of holiness, the heights of honor and 
purity, the sense of being on Christ’s side, — did 
you ever know these to come in that way? 

Notice, however, that what we want — the 
new power — never forces itself in, never dis¬ 
places our own free-will, never sets aside our 
own agency or energy. Independent in its own 
life and love, the Spirit’s 44 help” depends on our 
being ready for it. Help is not substitution, or 
a grace that is irresistible. Are you ready to be 
helped? Each of you who really wants to live 
rightly and worthily in the Christian family,where 
you belong, must ask the question more or less se¬ 
riously and fairly, more or less often: 44 What have 
I to do about the helping?” Acknowledging your 
infirmity, you cannot be content to go on in that 
destitution and deformity another year, another 
Lent, or indefinitely. Among all the marvels re¬ 
ported, there is none of a disordered conscience 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


150 

cured by letting it alone, no spiritual “infirmity” 
healed from without, or without the Spirit. 

What, then, have you to will to do? Simply 
to believe in this helping; because, really believing 
in it, that faith will be felt in your whole life, your 
prayers, your temper, your tongue — not all at 
once, perhaps, but more and more. A habit 
of thinking of God as helping you will make 
God to you what He never was before, will make 
your religion a reality, will make your prayers 
more than a formality or an obligation. 

Take care not to set up any tests of your own 
as to what the help shall be. When persons are 
discouraged in their devotions, and give them 
up, it is apt to be because they had some notion of 
their own, some pet plan or scheme to be carried 
out for their relief. The short-sighted, impatient 
child tells the Almighty, the tender, patient 
Father, what kind of a Father He ought to be! 
The Spirit would help you if He could, if you 
would give Him time, if you would hold out a 
trusting and thankful hand to take hold of. 

Do you not find that, whatever the burden, 
the trouble, may be, you look to yourself or to 
human sympathy, advice or charity, to some new 
plan, place, amusement, or social theory, for 
relief; rather than above all these, and above 


MONDAY AFTER THE FOURTH SUNDAY 151 

yourself, to the Father who cares for you, the 
Friend who is nearer and tenderer than any other, 
the Comforter who comforteth us — if we will 
have Him — in every tribulation ? That is the 
“infirmity” of our religion. We look about us. 
There is so much going on, so much stir and noise, 
so many societies, schemes, projects, so much 
talk and philosophizing, — have they no medicine 
for this malady that takes the joy out of our work, 
the rest out of our night ? 

You know that something is wrong. Some¬ 
thing is wanting — not between you and man — 
but between you and God. Everything is full 
of man and running over, — business, trade, 
machinery, clubs, parties, play-houses, newspapers. 
They are not all bad, neither are all the men or 
the women. But where is God? What place 
is there for Him? Is there a definite place for 
Him in your thoughts, your plans, your affections, 
your daily life ? 

If there is, bring your infirmities to Him; 
confess them; and you will know at once whose 
Right Hand it is that, with sure and secret power, 
is stretched forth to help and defend you. 

Oh, never man is blest as he 
Who, freed from some infirmity 
Rejoices in his liberty. 


i5 2 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


Without life’s ills we could not feel 
The blessed change from woe to weal; 

Only the wounded limb can heal. 

And only he who feels the band 
Of slavery loosed, doth understand 
How sure and strong is God’s right hand. 

O Most Blessed Lord, According to the multitude of Thy 
mercies deliver Thy servant, who is bound with fetters of sin. 
Grant me liberty, and refresh me with the light of Thy presence. 
Help Thou mine infirmities, and I shall be helped indeed. 
Grant it for the Redeemer’s sake. Amen. 


CuesDap after tfce Jfouttf) ^untiap 

There are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit. And 
there are differences of administration, but the same Lord. 
— i Cor., xii., 4, 5. 

Out of the thirteen Apostles there were four, 
the most conspicuous, and the most efficient in 
founding the Church. I select these four — 
Peter, Paul, James, and John — as representing 
four prominent qualities in a well-proportioned 
disciple, four branches of individual character. 
While these four teachers were stamped emphati¬ 
cally with Christ’s doctrine, yet that Christian 
life took in each of them a distinctive form and 
color. The combination of these four presented 
Christianity in its wholeness, blending their 
personal diversities in a comprehensive unity; 
so that, by a personal imitation of what was 
paramount in each, and adjusting together the 
elements of character they represent, we may 
approach to something like a symmetrical life. 

First appears St. Peter, ardent, impetuous, 
vehement Peter. Standing by the seaside, at 
153 


154 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


his business as a fisherman, he was one of the first 
that Christ called to come with Him; and there, at 
the very outset, he did not hesitate an instant to 
leave his nets bleaching in, the sun, abandoning 
his property and his home for the uncertain for¬ 
tunes of a leader that had not where to lay His 
head. We find in tracing his career, that he had 
many inconsistencies. Above all, you will re¬ 
member that most flagrant of his impulses, when 
— having resolutely promised: “Though all men 
should be offended because of Thee, yet will I 
never be offended” — he three times declared, 
when stung by insult and ridicule, “I know not 
the man.” And yet, so far as subsequent fidelity, 
both in intensity and perseverance, could atone, 
he washed out the stain of these sad dis¬ 
graces by deeds as well as tears. Peter was 
an enthusiast. He was much else besides, but 
preeminently he was that. In the culture of our 
spiritual life, and in the exercise of it, we need 
the Petrine element. We want the glow, the 
warmth, the flame of this energetic, fervent, 
resistless zeal. Doubtless we are liable to the 
same errors in it that the Apostle was. To guide 
the impulse by carefulness; to steady the way¬ 
ward transport of feeling by sober meditation; 
to hallow the hot enthusiasm by the sanctities 


TUESDAY AFTER THE FOURTH SUNDAY 155 

of prayer, — this is the task of all that have 
Peter’s ardent temperament and would share his 
moral victory. 

And, to that very end, we must call in a new 
element, — the element that had its impersona¬ 
tion in Peter’s fellow Apostle, St. Paul. Whether 
as Jew or Christian, he believed with all his soul. 
The same earnestness of conviction, strength of 
will, and vitality of allegiance, went into his 
Judaism and his Christianity; for after the 
straitest sect he lived a Pharisee, and yet was not 
disobedient to the heavenly vision of the light 
above the brightness of the sun. His strong pas¬ 
sions made his religious experience vivid as the 
lightning, and his comprehensive intellect made 
his eloquence reverberate like the thunder. His 
moods were various, but all intense. He was 
resolute enough to withstand Barnabas, his asso¬ 
ciate, to the face in a question of principle, yet 
was tender enough to restore Eutychus and com¬ 
fort afflicted women; a man to confound equally 
the Jews who required a sign and the idolaters 
that sought after worldly wisdom; a man that 
could tell — and tell without complaining, with 
a light heart and cheerful tone — of stripes and 
stonings, shipwrecks and perils by the wilderness, 
of robbers and false brethren, of watchings and 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


156 

nakedness, of hunger and thirst and weariness, 
glorying in his tribulations; — could also tell of 
visions and revelations in the third heavens, of 
joy unspeakable and the peace that passeth 
understanding. 

The secret of all this steadfastness of spirit 
was faith in doctrine — Paul’s leading doctrine. 
Something to believe, something definite, — this 
is the Pauline contribution to Christian com¬ 
pleteness. Its grandest effect is seen in Himself. 
It was by its uplifting power that he could break 
forth into those triumphant strains, ringing like 
sublime anthems down through all history to 
this hour. “For I am persuaded that neither 
death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor 
powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor 
height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be 
able to separate us from the love of God.” “This 
corruptible must put on incorruption; this mortal 
must put on immortality. Thanks be to God, 
who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus 
Christ.” 

However, though faith itself cannot possibly 
be too abundant, we may hold a particular 
notion of it in such proportion as to seem to 
exclude another element, quite as necessary. 
We must call in an Apostle of works to keep the 


TUESDAY AFTER THE FOURTH SUNDAY 157 

balance even. James, a near kinsman of Jesus, 
a man upright from his youth up, of irreproach¬ 
able manners and respected character even before 
the new standard of the Gospel broke upon him, 
was the representative of the right life, as Paul 
was of the right mind; and so consistently did 
he exemplify in his person the doctrine he preached 
in his ministry and wrote in his Epistle, that he 
received from his acquaintances the noble title of 
“ James the Just.” Not very much is said of 
him in the narrative, but, as often happens with 
silent men, a great deal was done by him. His 
single, brief Epistle, full of concise, epigrammatic 
expressions, runs in a direction not to controvert 
St. Paul's, but to provide for a want St. Paul may 
seem to have left open. Paul had said, and 
truly, “Ye are saved by faith.” James added: 
“Show me thy faith without thy works, and I 
will show thee my faith by my works.” Paul 
proclaims the immortal truth, lying at the very 
heart of the Gospel: “By God's grace are ye 
saved; it is free gift.” James accepts this dec¬ 
laration, but urges us to rememebr that the spirit 
must have a body; that God's free grace is granted 
only on conditions, and may be detected by cer¬ 
tain signs; and that where it has a vital seat within, 
it will inevitably bud and blossom into the “pure 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


158 

and undefiled religion” which visits “the father¬ 
less and widows in their affliction and keeps itself 
unspotted from the world.” 

James is a teacher of ethics. We are to obey 
the commandments as well as feel and believe. 
We have then ardor, conviction, and morality; 
but one thing is wanting yet, and that is love. 

It is at hand in the person of St. John, whose 
love for Jesus earned for him the epithet, un¬ 
equaled in all the honors and dignities of the 
world’s nobilities, “the Beloved Disciple.” It 
was he who leaned his head on the Saviour’s 
bosom at the Supper; he who received from the 
lips quivering on the cross that dying charge, 
“Behold thy mother;” he that, in the infirmity 
of age, when his voice could utter no more, 
stretched out his hands over the assembly and 
said that simple precept, the rich substance of 
many longer sermons, “Little children, love one 
another.” John is the Apostle of spirituality. 
His wisdom is of the heart; his faith is less of 
belief than trust; his doctrine is as simple as a 
child’s thanksgiving. No Apostle seems to have 
clung with such reverential affection to the Person 
of Jesus. He completes the full Apostolic mani¬ 
festation of the Christian character. He brings 
in that crowning and harmonizing element of 


TUESDAY AFTER THE FOURTH SUNDAY 159 

love, without which zeal and faith and conscience 
are all wanting. 

Here, then, let us rest. Peter, Paul, James, 
John: — impulse, conviction, law, love; will, 
intellect, conscience, affection; a good disposition, 
a clear faith, a right life, a pure heart; — these 
are the constituents of the perfect man. 

In your own lives, take something excellent 
from each. Peter supplies hope; Paul, steadfast¬ 
ness; James, self-control; John, sensibility. Blend 
their virtues and graces together. Count it high 
honor to share largely in the attainments of any 
one, but better still to gain generous proportions 
by following so many. Rejoice that the Christian 
standard is so high, is infinite, is unattainable 
here; yet struggle no less to rise to it hereafter. 

Above all, labor and watch and pray; that look¬ 
ing to Him who is greater than Apostles and Head 
over all Churches, you may be “ changed into the 
same image,” finding “the measure of the stature 
of the fulness of Christ.” For though “there are 
differences of administrations, there is the same 
Lord.” 

How can one man, how can all men, 

How can we be like St. Paul, 

Like St. John or like St. Peter, 

Like the least of all 

Blessed Saints? for we are small. 


i6o 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


Love can make us like St. Peter, 

Love can make us like St. Paul, 

Love can make us like the blessed 
Bosom friend of all, 

Great St. John, — though we are small. 

Love, which clings and trusts and worships, 

Love which rises from a fall, 

Love which, teaching glad obedience 
Labors most of all, — 

Love makes great the great and small. 

O Merciful Lord, I beseech Thee to cast Thy light upon 
my soul, that being enlightened by the loving example and 
teaching of Thy blessed Saints, I may walk in love, and be 
blest by the light of Thy truth, so that I may at length attain to 
the light and love of everlasting life. Amen. 


(BIIeDne0Dap after tfce JFourtft SunDag 

What saith . . . God? I have reserved to myself seven 
thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to the image of 
Baal. 

Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant. 
— Rom., xi., 4, 5. 

One of the habits of mind that enfeeble and 
unsettle the faith is a timid deference to some 
numerical or material superiority. Ours must be 
a rare lot, if we never come to a point of duty 
where we must part company with those whose 
companionship is delightful and whose sym¬ 
pathy is precious; and the nearer and dearer 
they are, the sharper the separation. It is the 
old choice — old as faith — between conscience 
and popularity, between the favor of others and 
the salvation of God. 

Will you dare to go to your little Calvary alone, 
not even a Simon the Cyrenean to carry your 
cross for you ? You have sung valiantly in Church, 
“Soldiers of Christ, arise”; but then there are 
soldiers to sing and arise with you. Can you go 
out from man’s majority, satisfied to wait patiently 

161 


162 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


alone till a place is given you with God’s “ re¬ 
serves”? Except a man take up this cross of 
spiritual exile, at need, he cannot be the Master’s 
disciple. 

Whatever else our times need, they need the 
safeguard and the nobility of unbending, inde¬ 
pendent, private convictions, convictions with a 
quick sense of individual accountability. Granted 
that you were born a social creature, you were 
born to an undivided personality; you will die 
alone; and you will go alone to judgment. Our 
life is so ordered that there comes now and then, 
for man and for woman, for the young man and 
the young woman, for the salesman in the shop 
and the priest at the altar, a parting of the ways, 
right and left; and there you will stand alone, 
or kneel alone; not asking how many or how 
few will stand with you, — choosing, deciding 
alone, not counting friends or foes, looking one 
way, asking for one thing only: “Show Thou me 
the way that I should walk in, for I lift up my 
soul unto Thee.” 

In spite of sanguine calculations, to some minds 
it appears that Christianity is losing ground, 
because there are defections, disbelievers, de¬ 
serters. If you see, or think you see, decline, 
more doubt, less prayer, a shrinking in gifts of 


WEDNESDAY AFTER THE FOURTH SUNDAY 163 

time, money and pains, what effect has that 
shrinkage on your own personal fidelity? Will 
you doubt with the doubters? “What saith the 
answer of God to Elijah?’’ Seven thousand 
of the slender army of Irsael are more than seventy 
thousand with Baal, — not because seven are 
more than seventy, but because the Lord is Israel’s 
God. For the whole land of Irsael seven thou¬ 
sand were not many, whether for conquest or 
defence. Nobody knew where they were. Scat¬ 
tered and hidden, who should gather, organize, 
and lead them ? Only the Lord knew. But 
He did know. And seven thousand with the 
Almighty are enough. 

Man’s minorities may be God’s invincibles. 
Heaven’s measurements and ours are far apart. 
We estimate by mathematics, by dimensions, by 
bulk. God’s heavenly hosts are not counted; 
no man can number them. In wonderful ways 
He delivers the few and the feeble — Elijah’s 
“remnant,” St. Paul’s “reserves,” — a hundred 
and twenty in an upper room in Jerusalem, two 
voyagers from Asia in a prison at Philippi, enter¬ 
ing by that narrow gateway heathen Europe and 
all the heathen West! Take Christianity itself, 
— from the first a minority among mankind; 
within it apostolical, consistent believers, a minor- 


164 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


ity; even among these, they who personally and 
openly avow their loyalty to Christ, a minority; 
among these again, they who consistently live 
out their faith in Him, a minority “reserved” 
all along. 

Whatever and wherever the battle may be, 
the victory is not in ourselves, or we should have 
been beaten long ago; not in our knowledge, 
little at best; not in our own will, often foolish or 
perverse; not in our good intentions, which often 
waver or go to sleep. We are not sure to be 
strong by being on the side of the “ finest bat¬ 
talion,” as the German fighter reckoned in his 
epigram; we are never conquerors by being in a 
majority, save as, in the words of the German 
reformer, “One man with the Almighty is always 
a majority.” 

Take care, then, to be with the seven thousand, 
if there are seven thousand; with the seven, if 
there are only seven. Put your will with God’s, 
and power comes and prevails; and with power, 
peace. The prayer of faith is sure of its answer: 
“Show Thou me the way that I should walk in, 
for I lift up my soul unto Thee.” “In Thee, O 
Lord, do I put my trust; let me never be con¬ 
founded.” 


WEDNESDAY AFTER THE FOURTH SUNDAY 165 

Fighting alone to-night, 

With not even a stander-by 
To cheer me on in the fight, 

Or to hear me when I cry! 

Only the Lord can hear, 

Only the Lord can see: 

The struggle within, how dark and drear, 
Though quiet the outside be! 

And as, with sudden pain, 

My hands unfold and clasp, 

So doth my will stand up again, 

And taketh its old firm grasp. 

Nothing but perfect trust, 

And love of Thy perfect Will, 

Can raise me out of the dust, 

And bid my fears lie still. 

O my God, whose faithfulness and truth are man’s shield 
and buckler; grant me courage openly to confess and boldness 
steadfastly to defend Thy Truth; alone, if it be Thy will; yet 
not alone, since Thou art ever with those who put their trust 
in Thee. For Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen. 


Ctmrstiap after tfje jFouttb ©utrtap 

Then said Martha unto Jesus: “Lord, if Thou hadst been 
here, my brother had not died.” — St. John, xi., 21. 

Martha believed in the power and love of her 
Lord; but she believed that this power and love, 
if they had been afforded a chance to operate at 
all, must necessarily have been displayed by pro¬ 
longing her brother’s life in the body. She is a 
type of that faith, sincere and yet imperfect, 
beautiful in its prompt simplicity, which believes 
in the Divine mercy, but continues to regard 
personal safety and the outward society of kin¬ 
dred as more important than the doing of God’s 
will; which clings to and prays for the privilege 
of clasping friends or children in the arms of flesh, 
more fervently than for the spiritual purification, 
the glory of character, which may come of their 
removal. She represents all of us who fail of 
that thorough submission which rejoices more 
in being drawn to immortal excellence by suffer¬ 
ing than in being exempted from it. 
r Character depends on inward strength. It is 
v 166 


THURSDAY AFTER THE FOURTH SUNDAY 167 

increased only by being put forth, and it is tested 
only by resistance. Suffering, then, in some 
form, must be introduced, — the appointed min¬ 
ister, the great assayist, to put the genuineness 
of faith to the proof, and purify it of its dross. 
How many of us are only able, when they come, to 
say with Martha, “ Lord, if Thou hadst been here, — 
if Thy goodness could have been exercised, these 
evils could not have befallen me.” Whereas we 
ought clearly to say: “Lord, in these very chasten- 
ings of friendly love Thou hast been here, — not 
to save me from sufferings, but to save me spirit¬ 
ually through and by them.” 

Christ’s own way of treating'sufferers sustains 
this view. We fall into a mistake, I think, when 
we imagine that Jesus ever wrought those wonders 
—of healing disease or restoring life to the dead— 
merely out of personal pity with the sick or the 
mourners. Infinite as that pity was, it took a 
higher range and had a diviner object than the 
mere assuaging of present pain, or the prolonging 
of the earthly existence. When He knows that 
Lazarus is dead, while He is touched with tender¬ 
ness toward the weeping kindred, he says plainly 
to His disciples: “I am glad, for your sakes, that 
I was not there, to the intent ye may believe .” 
How manifestly the whole mercy was granted 


i68 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


only to confirm that incomparable and eternal 
truth: “I am the Resurrection and the Life; 
whosoever believeth on me, though he were dead, 
yet shall he live.” And now, after eighteen 
centuries, Jesus does not stay to revoke for us 
the decrees of nature, to be a physician to our 
sickness, or a warder at the door to keep out 
death. He stays, but for a higher ministry; not 
to exempt us from suffering, but to conduct us 
through it into heavenly strength and peace; not 
for a physical and temporary cure, but a spiritual 
and final one. And so our confession ought not 
to be the half-faithless one: “Lord, if Thou hast 
been here, our friends, our children, would not 
have sickened and died,” but, “Lord, because 
Thou art here, all our sickness, our dying even, 
shall be for the raising up of our souls and the 
glory of God.” 

There is another class of moral experiences 
where the principle of this doctrine has an 
equally direct application, — persons who, having 
sincerely begun a Christian life, suffer the temp¬ 
tation of longing more earnestly for rest than for 
faithful submission. How many really earnest 
souls of us are spoiling our work because we 
invert God’s order, and, instead of seeking faith 
supremely, go about to get comfort first, and thus 


THURSDAY AFTER THE FOURTH SUNDAY 169 

miss faith and comfort both! As the years wear 
towards the deep sunset, we are weary of the 
making no nearer approaches to a real rec¬ 
onciliation and living intimacy with our Lord. 
But do we long for that rest religiously enough 
to wait for it? Baffled and broken the soul 
must often be before its immortal strength comes. 
Humiliation of pride, an utter consciousness of 
infirmity, fasting and mortified ambition, forty 
days in the wilderness, — all these are the price 
of conquest. Do not pray for exemption from 
them, but for victory by them. What right have 
we to say: “Lord, if Thou hadst been here, doubts 
and difficulties would not have tormented us: 
our hearts would not have died within us,” when 
all those things are only the remaining echoes of 
our former disobedience? Enough if we can 
say: “Lord, because Thou hast promised to be 
with us, we will bear them, and wait Thy will!” 

Further still, you may generalize this instruc¬ 
tion so as to make it embrace all those instances 
where the disappointed and the afflicted vex 
themselves with the superfluous doubt, whether 
some care was not omitted, whether the fatal 
blow might not have been warded off. When 
shall we learn that even out of the sorrows we 
might have prevented, but did not, we may now 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


170 

draw a spiritual benefit greater than to have 
prevented them? Vain cry, “Lord, if Thou 
hadst been here!” Better to receive and bless 
Him in whatever robes of darkness, when He 
comes. 

The doctrine pronounces no remonstrance 
against sorrow, nor against tears; how can it, 
when it is in the very scene before us that we see 
how “Jesus wept”? St. Paul found the secret 
of the wisdom that at once allows of these tender 
alternations of feeling, and yet subjects them 
to a holier faith: “They that weep should be as 
though they wept not; and they that rejoice as 
though they rejoiced not.” For there is a life, 
possible to the soul through the Spirit, in which 
suffering and death itself are swallowed up and 
lost, like bubbles on some calm, deep stream. 

This, then, is the faith in which our life is to 
be lived, and our burdens are to be borne. And 
these are the steps towards that conclusion: that 
suffering is disciplinary; that if our desires reach 
only after exemption from it, we pray but half¬ 
faithless prayers; and that the true conquest of 
faith, as well as the solution of the mystery of 
sorrow, lie only in our willingness to suffer, so 
far as it may bring us to the society and communion 
of our Lord. Not from suffering, but through it 


THURSDAY AFTER THE FOURTH SUNDAY 171 

into life eternal, is the Christ-like longing of the 
believer. 

“I know” — is all the mourner saith — 

“Knowledge by suffering entereth, 

And life is perfected by death; — 

“I am content to touch the brink 
Of pain’s dark goblet, and I think 
My bitter drink a wholesome drink. 

“I am content to be so weak: 

Put strength into the words I speak, 

For I am strong in what I seek. 

“I am content to be so bare 
Before the archers; everywhere 
My wounds being stroked by heavenly air. 

“Glory to God — to God!” he saith; 

“Knowledge by suffering entereth, 

And life is perfected by death.” 

O God, the strengthener of the soul, in my weakness make 
perfect Thy strength. 

Thou who givest command, give me also the power to fulfil. 

Thou takest away pleasures; take away uneasy desire of 
them. 

Thou appointest me sorrows; enable me to find out the 
good in them. 

What Thou takest, let me resign gladly; what Thou givest, 
let me accept thankfully. Amen. 


jFrftmp after tfie jFourtf) ©unoap 

Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be 
equal with God; 

But made Himself of no reputation, . . . and was made in 
the likeness of men. — Phil., ii., 6, 7. 

We find it hard to suit ourselves to our limita¬ 
tions. It is the harder because we are not sure 
just where the boundary lines that hedge us in 
were meant to run, and so doubt whether submis¬ 
sion to what we call “our lot” may not be a tame 
contentment on dishonorable terms. The walls 
about our weakness appear to be movable. If 
sometimes they contract and close us in with 
an awful fatality like the cell of the Italian prisoner, 
at other times a touch from without on some 
secret spring seems to press them back, or they 
recede by the resistance of our own will. Traced 
through all its manifold forms, this dark con¬ 
sciousness of inability, this perpetual disparity 
between aspiration and attainment, is the least 
ignoble sorrow of our life. It is the tragical 
element in all every-day callings that lie above the 
level of a dull servitude to routine or necessity. 

172 


FRIDAY AFTER THE FOURTH SUNDAY 173 

The old word “straitened” expressed it graphi¬ 
cally. St. Paul uses that, and sets over against 
it the idea of enlargement. 

It is not irreverent, but the contrary, to con¬ 
sider that here was the suffering of our Lord 
Himself in the flesh. Agony came to Him as a 
consequence of His voluntary surrender of His 
heavenly fulness and almightiness. Parting with 
these, such suffering as belongs to limited natures 
was inevitable. He did not go in search of suffer¬ 
ing — that would have been a vain asceticism, — 
He was in search of the souls of men. Suffering 
was a necessary incident, and unspeakably help¬ 
ful to Him in getting a hold on Humanity, and 
atoning for sin. The glory of the Incarnation 
was that, in order to redeem the race by uniting 
it by faith with Himself, He left the other glory 
which He had with the Father “before the world 
was.” Veiling the Godhead for a while, there 
were things which He could not see. The limi¬ 
tation was self-limitation; yet once chosen it must 
be borne in all its accompaniments of grief. Tak¬ 
ing our nature upon Him, He took its liabilities 
to pain in every one of its capacities and organs, 
the lower and the higher; that is, He took the 
mortal limitations put upon an absolutely perfect, 
untempted, ineffably glorious and blessed life. 


174 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


How grandly this fellowship in suffering with 
the Divine Sufferer ennobles the narrow room 
where, either in a literal or metaphorical sense, 
you are obliged to lie still and wait! Pondering 
this august partnership, not the less tender 
because it is so mysterious, and not the less natural 
because it is supernatural, I think you will find 
your cell to be a wide and consecrated place; 
your “valley of Achor” a door of hope. Through 
the strait gate, and beyond it, you see a boundless 
liberty. Acepting your present restrictions, open 
or hidden, voluntary or imposed, as a part of the 
vast system of subjection whereby the whole crea¬ 
tion “groaneth and travaileth in pain together until 
now,” “waiting for the manifestation of the sons 
of God,” you will be aware of a holy exaltation 
in being counted worthy to share in so sublime 
a plan. What can be meant by that wonderful 
saying that an apostolic man can “fill up that 
which is behind of the afflictions of Christ” in his 
flesh “for His body’s sake, which is the Church” ? 
Who could not adjust himself to any limitations, 
if he knew that, in a sense real, however mystical, 
he is thereby not only conforming to the Eternal 
Father’s order for His child, but contributing 
his best and worthiest offering to the supreme 
relief and joy of his kind ? Baxter had a discern- 


FRIDAY AFTER THE FOURTH SUNDAY 175 

ment of this mediatorial companionship in his 
verse: 

“Christ leads me through no darker rooms 
Than he went through before; 

He that into God’s kingdom comes 
Must enter by this door.” 


Seeking the fulfilment in yourself of this celestial 
law, and placing yourself in a posture of devout 
obedience to it, you may suffer much, but you will 
not be suffered to sink into hopeless despondency, 
or to be discomforted with hard thoughts of God. 
It will be far more just and modest in you to 
believe that the yoke is put upon you because 
He sees in you a capacity to serve Him signally 
somewhere, some day; because He sets value 
not so much on what you are in yourself, as on 
what He has wrought into your inward compo¬ 
sition; and therefore that He is proving you in 
His own furnace of fire, trying you as silver is 
tried. 

Take care and see to it that it is silver that 
comes out; silver without alloy, meet for the 
Master’s use. 


And shall not He, whose care enfolds 
Our life, and all our way controls, 
Yet satisfy our longing souls? 


176 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


Who shall dare limit Him above, 

Or tell the ways in which He’ll prove 
Unto His children all His love? 

So shall we all, who groan in this, 

Find in that new life’s perfectness 
Our own peculiar heaven of bliss. 

O Lord Jesus, who being Infinite didst for our sake deign 
to encompass Thyself with limitations; curb our eyes, wills, 
imaginations, desires, that law and instruction may be our 
ornament of grace and chains of dignity; and that Thy service 
may be our perfect freedom: For Thy merits and mercy. 
Amen. 


SaturDap after t&e jFourtft ©unoap 

Then again called they the man that was blind, and said 
unto him: Give God the praise: we know that this man is a 
sinner. 

He answered and said: Whether he be a sinner or no, I know 
not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see. 
— St. John, ix., 24, 25. 

Place yourself with that man by the roadside 
whose eyes had been opened. In his voice hear 
the voice of humanity, crying out all over the 
world. Hear your own voice, for his nature is 
in you, and yours in him. Just now he was 
feeling after something that he could not find; 
he was weak, solitary, dependent, longing for 
vision, liberty, and strength. So, perhaps, you 
are wanting something, feeling your need of what 
you have not; not satisfied with yourself; not 
satisfied with others; not satisfied with the 
world, having “longings unsufficed.” You have a 
trouble that you cannot comfort. You have hours 
of darkness that make life seem a doubtful good. 
You have sometimes an unexplained despond¬ 
ency, a bitter sense of failure, or a questioning 
why God made you as you are. 

177 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


178 

That honest soul by the roadside let the want 
and sorrow in him cry out earnestly to the One 
only of all men who, he is sure, can help him, the 
Friend who is a friend to everybody, the Wonder¬ 
worker who has touched other eyes and healed 
other maladies, with a charity as boundless as 
heaven itself. 

We too are blind. There are other eyes need¬ 
ing to be opened, the organs of an inward, spirit¬ 
ual knowledge, of that knowledge which is the 
soul’s sight, — the sight of hidden things and 
heavenly things, of duty, of the beauty of holiness, 
of the majesty of a good conscience, of the peace 
that comes after doing right, of the blessed 
mysteries of the Church and her Sacraments, 
of the light in the countenance of Christ. This 
spiritual sight is gradual in its coming; it does 
not come all at once, but little by little. Every¬ 
body can have it; but there is now no miracle 
about it, except as there is always something 
supernatural in the way God touches our hearts. 

We get this supernatural sight from Christ by 
doing certain things, not by waiting idly for it. 
These religious actions are our way of going to 
the pool of Siloam, as the blind man did. They 
are the obedience of our faith, minding each 
direction in its place; listening to the Word, con- 


SATURDAY AFTER THE FOURTH SUNDAY 179 

fessing sin, taking each of the great ordinances 
in order, controlling our temper, sacrificing our 
own likings, helping people at the cost of some 
self-denial. But the healing process takes time; 
it is lengthened out. At first, when we turn 
about and begin to loathe the old, bad life, and 
set our faces in the right direction, — our faculties 
having been enfeebled and confused by our 
wrong living, — things are a little mixed; we 
“see men as trees walking.” Going on, there 
is conscious gain. The light grows. The sight 
grows clearer and clearer, and you are longer- 
sighted, till finally you can see “the land that 
is very far off,” and “the King in His 
beauty.” 

But all along, and anywhere, you are perfectly 
certain of seeing, and you know who healed you. 
One thing you know; there is no mystification 
or obscurity about that. You met the great 
Master on the highway; and whereas you had 
been blind, now you see. 

It is one of the temptations in a restless age 
like ours, — in every class in society, because 
intellectual activity, by press and school and 
debate, reaches them all, — to put the brain 
where the heart ought to be, and so, distorting 
the symmetry and beauty of character, to send 


180 THE DAYS OF LENT 

disorder and disobedience through the life. Those 
purblind Pharisees brought their opinions to 
browbeat and sophisticate a simple soul. He 
threw them off their balance by the steady equi¬ 
poise and insight of his grateful heart. He seesI 
The eyes that he has turned down to the ground 
all these years are raised and illuminated. The 
daylight dances in them. Around him is the 
human world; over him is the friendly sky; every 
hilltop and blade of grass is a revelation. What 
are dry controversies and barren prejudices to 
him? His religion is in his grateful and loyal 
affection. “One thing I know.” The rest of 
your learning is just now insignificant. If the 
man utters his thought, it must be in some old 
psalm of his people: “Be thankful unto God, 
and speak good of His Name.” “O all ye works 
of the Lord, bless ye the Lord, praise Him and 
magnify Hint forever.” 

Witness, then, as the lesson of this day of Lent, 
the strong ground that a believing Christian 
stands on. His religion is rooted in a healing 
act of His Lord. Christ has loved him and 
saved him. He knows it, glories in it, and goes 
on his way, — an awakened, enlightened soul, — 
to do his Master grateful, faithful service. 


SATURDAY AFTER THE FOURTH SUNDAY 181 


The blind, the suffering here below 
Learns what the whole can never know 
Of the soft Hand that heals his woe. 

He sees, with great and glad surprise, 

The world that round about him lies, 

When falls the bandage from his eyes; 

And comes he whence he long hath lain, 

Comes from the darkness and the pain 
Out into God’s light full and plain. 

Henceforth his soul is all alight; 

He knows the dark, he knows the bright; 

He trusts the Power that gave him sight. 

O Eternal Word, Thou who art the Light that lighteneth 
every man that cometh into the world, heal in me the blindness 
of sin; give me by Thy Spirit clear understanding, that I may 
see and know God, whom to know is eternal life: For Thy 
merits and mercy. Amen. 


iFiftf) ©unDap in lent 

Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of 
God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou 
wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living 
water. — St. John, iv., io. 

Not only does Christ reveal God to man, He 
reveals man to himself. Into whatever company 
He entered, the persons about Him were con¬ 
scious of a new self-knowledge; and they went 
out one by one, not gossiping about other people’s 
sins, but astonished at the discovery of their own. 
Everybody’s eyes were turned inward. Each one 
saw how weak, or mean, or hollow, or filthy he 
was; and how changed, cleansed, and Christ-like 
he ought to be, — yes, and might be if he would. 
He felt a new thirst — the thirst for that other 
well, deeper than Jacob’s, which springs up in 
the heart of Christ. He said, “Come to me; you 
shall have power to live out your best self by the 
energy and grace I give.” The woman at the well 
exclaimed in her wondering exaggeration, “He 
told me all things that ever I did.” He had told 
her one thing, but it was the one black secret that 

182 


FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT 183 

discolored and darkened all the rest. Always we 
find Him doing or saying something to wake up 
the spiritual sense, opening the heart, stirring a 
healthy discontent. Give Him yourself, and He 
will give you back to yourself—oh, if thou knew- 
est the gift of God! — back to yourself, your life 
satisfied by its likeness to His. 

Curiosity or personal anxiety may ask how He 
creates that thirst — the thirst which cries, “Give 
me this living water!” He sometimes creates it 
by lifting up before you a vision of good lives, of 
heroes and saints, and your heart kindles with 
a momentary sympathy. You take up your New 
Testament, and there shines the marvelous 
splendor of that one Perfect Life, of which 
you know you might have a blessed share, and 
more and more abundantly, if you will. 

He creates it also by conscience, that awful and 
mighty witness within, which, in spite of all your 
levity or unbelief, lives on; which oceans cannot 
quench, or graves bury, or earthquakes displace, 
because it is a part of Humanity itself. It is work¬ 
ing before you sin, commanding, “Thou shalt 
not! ” it is waiting by you when you sin, more faith¬ 
ful than your reason or your will; it is remorse and 
agony and retribution after you have sinned, — 
making you afraid of the Father, ashamed of your- 


184 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


self, face to face with judgment. This is one 
form of the thirst. 

He creates it by suffering. That.is the key to 
every dark chamber in the world, — a new life, 
born, like the other life, in pain. That is the 
divine meaning of sickness, and the inmost sense 
of the Beatitudes. That is the undertone in the 
pathetic cries of the long days and nights of grief, 
— “Would God it were evening!” “Would God 
it were morning!” “I said, It is mine own infir¬ 
mity. I needed what I did not seek — the Light 
of Life. I must betake me to Him who has made 
bereavements beneficent, and all goodness im¬ 
mortal, and every soul that comes thirsting to Him 
victorious over disorder and death, satisfied to be 
like Him by being with Him. ,, 

Why should He be the Man of Sorrows ? Why 
should He not “go up to joy, but first He suffered 
pain ? ” They who have lived the deeper life know 
that it is because, here at least, trouble opens the 
eyes, the heart, — the hand, too, — of our real 
selves. Knowledge at its best fails us when we 
are heart-sick, or penitent, or standing by a grave 
which holds fast what is dearer than our own life; 
but He who gives the “gift” makes it possible for 
us to live on for the rest of our time without flinch¬ 
ing or doubting. 


FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT 185 

Because a Christian life is to many of us a hard 
thing, as high things are apt to be hard, it need not 
be a bewildering thing. In a strain of lofty thought 
St. Paul tells us of the “ simplicity that is in Christ.” 
To Him, or to you by Him, the way out of a faith¬ 
less or heedless past to a future of faith and work 
is as clear as any path you tread daily. And 
remember, He said, “Do thou His will, and you 
shall know.” You may often disentangle a moral 
problem best by an act of self-denial, to help some 
one weaker than yourself. You may fathom the 
philosophy of duty by doing your duty. As good a 
remedy as any for a lack of faith is to use what 
little stock of faith you have, lengthening your 
creed by a loving and patient life. The Holy 
Spirit “helpeth our infirmities”; and He helps 
them through the spiritual organ — an unques¬ 
tioning and unselfish heart. 

To-morrow — if we live till to-morrow — the 
work, the study, the strife of the every-day life will 
begin once more. To-day we stop and think and 
pray. What shall the prayer be ? Whatever 
other petitions there may be, for yourselves or 
those you love, pray this, I beseech you, reaching 
out the hand of your faith for the answer: 

Give me, O my God, the gift of gifts, the living water: give 
me the inward light, — water for my thirst, light for my life, 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


186 

Make me first to long for, and then to live, the life with Thee. 
Give Thou the gift, or I shall never have it. It will not be wages, 
but bounty, for I have never earned it. It will not be bought, for 
“In my hand no price I bring.” I beg it, for I am poor. I shall 
have it, for it is promised. I know Who Thou art, O Thou in 
Whom I have believed. Amen. 

Queen Mary one day Jesus sent 
To draw some water (legends tell); 

The little boy, obedient, 

Filled full the pitcher from the well. 

But as He raised it to His head, 

Heavy, with overflowing rim, 

The handle broke, and all was shed 
Upon the stones about the brim. 

His cloak upon the ground He laid, 

And in it gathered up the pool; 

Obedient there the water stayed, 

And home He bore it plentiful. . . . 

Thy living water I have spilt: 

I thought to bear the pitcher high; 

But on the shining stones of guilt 
I slipped — and there the pieces lie! 

Lord, in the garment of Thy flesh 
Thou brought’st the living water first; 

Gather to Thee Thy truth afresh, 

Afresh to flow for human thirst. 



Qgontmg after tfje jFiftlj ©unfla? 

Then said they unto him, Who art thou? ... He said, I am 
the voice of one crying in the wilderness. — St. John, i., 22, 23. 

Jesus saith unto him, I am . . . the life. — St. John, xiv., 6. 

When John says he is a “voice,” he is con¬ 
trasting himself, very humbly, with the Son of 
God coming after him. “I am not that Christ, 
not worthy to loose the latchet of His sandals.” 
The Master Himself gives him his place and stand¬ 
ing: “Verily I say unto you, among them that 
are born of women there hath not risen a greater 
than John the Baptist.” It is no wonder that the 
Church for almost two thousand years has honored 
the martyr who was before Stephen; and that 
twice every year she reminds herself by his testi¬ 
mony “constantly to speak the truth, boldly re¬ 
buke sin, or patiently suffer for the truth’s sake.” 
She remembers and still hears the “voice.” 

But great and lasting as is this power, there is 
another greater and more enduring. It is not in 
any voice, any words written or spoken, however 
eloquent, brilliant, or true they may be. Not 
through any of the senses does it manifest its 

187 


188 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


presence, or demonstrate its reality. We know 
it by another faculty; we feel it by an invisible but 
irresistible conviction. Our Lord declares it of 
Himself again and again, that He has it, and He 
alone in its fulness and perfection: “I am come 
that they might have life, and that they might have 
it more abundantly.” Here the Word made flesh, 
Emmanuel, the Life-Giver, stands solitary, singu¬ 
lar and unapproachable. He has a “voice” like 
John, but within it is what no tongue of John 
could utter — “ Never man spake like this man.” 
His speech is surcharged and vitalized with a 
breath that is divine: “The words that I speak 
unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” 

Pass from the contrast between the two figures 
before our eyes, standing on the heights at the 
birth of the Christian faith and the beginning of 
the Church, down to the every-day world, where 
we ourselves have to work out our salvation. 
Every doctrine of Christ fails to fulfil its purpose, 
unless it touches our motives and makes us — us 
who are sons and daughters of God — less selfish, 
less sordid and frivolous, and more like our Lord. 
We are far enough in moral courage from John; 
and farther still in spiritual power from the Son 
of God, who by His living and cross taketh away 
the sin of the world: and yet we shall mistake the 


MONDAY AFTER THE FIFTH SUNDAY 189 

whole object of His coming into the world, the 
meaning of His Gospel, and what the Kingdom 
of Heaven comes into the world to do, unless we 
see that we ourselves, just in the measure of our 
capacity, are to share His life and live it out like 
Him. It was wonderful in Him; it will be less 
wonderful in us, but not less actual. He took it 
from His Father in Heaven, and brought it directly 
among men; so He said, and so He proved. We 
can take it directly from Him, walking at our side, 
a Workman tempted as we are, hungering, praying, 
dying as we do. This is why He says: “Come 
unto me.” Not, Come away from your every-day 
work into a separate profession, or from society into 
a cell or a cave, or from human interests into fine, 
shallow sentiments; but from your low life to a 
higher one, from a shallow life to a deeper one, 
from calculating and plotting for yourself to royal 
free-will service to people who are less privileged 
and less agreeable. 

You say you are weak, and you are; but this is 
the energy in heart and will, to make you strong, 
— “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew 
their strength.” You say you are of no account; 
but this makes you kindred with the nobility of 
the race, one in dignity and inheritance with the 
royal family whose title will outlast all the crests, 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


190 

escutcheons, blue books, and monuments. You 
say you have tried and failed, which is very likely; 
did you try of your own trying, or with conscious 
trust and prayer to Him in whom your whole life 
is “hid”? — and if so, are you sure you really 
failed? “To as many as received Him, to them 
He gave power” whoever they are, — leading 
citizens, servants, merchants and their clerks, 
scholars, housewives, young women of no calling, 
children untaught in any school, — to them gives 
He power “to become the sons” and daughters 
“of God.” 

The point is: As we get, so we give; as we take 
in, so we send out. It is the life more than the 
voice, Christ’s gift more than St. John’s gift, that 
tells and quickens and saves. Not so much what 
we say, still less what we have, not even what we 
do, is the greatest thing before God. Character 
is supreme, and it is eternal. Those other things, 

— the havings, the sayings, the doings, — how 
perishable they are! The men that have, the 
men that speak, the men that act, have their several 
places, honors, reputations, and memorials on the 
earth. There is quite another proof of what is 
everlasting, another criterion of immortality. 

There is a blessed comfort here for the majority, 

— those whom our Lord sought out first, and 


MONDAY AFTER THE FIFTH SUNDAY 191 


among whom He dwelt; — those who never have 
a great deal, never speak in commanding voices, 
never accomplish memorable enterprises, — not 
rich, not very gifted, not thought to be very suc¬ 
cessful. The property, the wealth, within their 
reach is character. The genius they are gifted 
with, whether in huts or mansions, is the genius 
of self-denying and therefore lovable goodness. 
Their success is the success of those who humble 
themselves, and are exalted; who lift a cross, to 
find it lifts them, — the success of Him who died 
poor that the world through Him might be rich. 

For who gives, giving doth win back his gift; 

And knowledge by division grows to more: 

Who hides the Master’s talent shall die poor, 

And starve at last of his own thankless thrift. 

Give thyself utterly away. Be lost. 

Choose someone, something, — not thyself, thine own: 

Thou canst not perish; but, thrice greater grown, 

Thy gain is greater where thy loss was most. 

O Gracious God, from whom all good gifts come; in so far as 
Thou wiliest me to be a “voice,” inspire me with kindly, cheerful, 
courteous and careful speech at all times; in so far as Thou wiliest 
me to act, grant me the constant help and direction of the Holy 
Spirit; that both in speech and act I may do Thy will and glorify 
Thy holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 


Cuestiap after tbe Jfiftf) ©unDap 

All our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through 
the sea. — i Cor., x., i. 

Along with the leading and inspiring presence 
of the Spirit in the cloud there was joined a neces¬ 
sary discipline on earth. The “sea” stands for 
that discipline. At the outset of the Flight from 
Egypt, the moment of concentrated agony and 
peril was when the host came to the shore of that 
flood which offered nothing but apparent destruc¬ 
tion in front, and the armies of Pharaoh were press¬ 
ing up in the pursuit behind. Would the walls of 
water stand firm? Would the Lord of winds and 
waves take care? Would that miracle of love, 
which has been worked in ten thousand times ten 
thousand instances to believers since, by ruined 
fortunes, by sick-beds, by new graves, by broken 
hopes — would it be wrought out there ? 

The sea answers to the vexing but purifying 
element of earthly sorrow. It is a waste. It is 
“bitter.” It is “the troubled sea.” Repeatedly 
the peace-making power of the Almighty in con¬ 
trolling the agitations of men is spoken of as His 

192 


TUESDAY AFTER THE FIFTH SUNDAY 193 

having “His pathway in the great waters.” Among 
the beautiful characteristics of the immense peace 
which is to surround the Son of Man and His mul¬ 
titude of worshipers hereafter, while we are told 
of the “new heavens” and the “new earth,” and 
the rainbow in the cloud of glory about the Throne, 
we are very strikingly told that “there shall be no 
more sea.” The Church’s ark of safety rescues 
the faithful from the Flood. St. Peter is our 
authority for reading in the deliverance from a 
deluge a prediction of the purifying and salvation 
of the soul. Few passages of any of the Prophets 
are more touching than Micah’s “Who is a God 
that pardoneth iniquity. ... He retaineth not His 
anger for ever, because He delighteth in mercy. 
He will turn again, He will have compassion 
upon us; He will subdue our iniquities; and thou 
wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.” 

Our God is here in the pain of all this painful 
life, as well as in the cloudy tabernacle overhead. 
The discipline of suffering and the leading of the 
Spirit are coordinated together in restoring a way¬ 
ward child to his Father’s house. Very few of us 
escape the pain, and if we should, we are obliged 
to believe we should miss some portion of the bless¬ 
ing. When God comes nearest to us He is apt to 
find us in the deep waters; and none are so deep 


i 9 4 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


as those of penitence and a contrite heart. When 
He becomes a Man, it is that He may be crucified; 
and He is crucified for us because, as a Captain 
or Leader, without suffering, He will not be per¬ 
fect towards followers that are sufferers. 

And hence, so surely as any soul is traveling 
towards triumphant peace in the life that now is, 
or a blessed immortality beyond it, he is made 
aware that he must be joined to that sacramental 
army whose banner is a Cross. 

When we are encircled with the fiery heat of our 
mortal limitations, fretting and burning us the 
more because we chafe against it; when conscience 
is ashamed, our will baffled, our love bereaved, 
then we can lift our eyes — oh, lift them for us, 
Thou Light of men! — to the Pillar of Cloud. 
And when we have beheld that moving sign of 
mediation by faith, we can turn back from it, the 
better to bear up through the sea. What we will 
not let the Heavenly grace directly accomplish in 
us, these fiery trials, which do not come as though 
some strange thing happened unto us, may achieve 
at last. 

So our Christian life is balanced and supported 
by the two co-working powers, — the Divine 
attraction there, the daily discipline here, — the 
promise and the rebuke, the banner and the drill, 


TUESDAY AFTER THE FIFTH SUNDAY 195 


the staff and the rod, the cloud and the sea. Loyal 
soldiers and servants to our life’s end, let us give 
humble and hearty thanks for both alike. 

Do what Thou wilt! yes, only do 
What seemeth good to Thee: 

Thou art so loving, wise, and true, 

It must be best for me. 

Send what Thou wilt, or beating shower, 

Soft dew or brilliant sun; 

Alike in still or stormy hour 
Thy will, O God, be done. 

Say what Thou wilt; and let each word 
My quick obedience win; 

Let loyalty and love be stirred 
To deeper glow within. 

O Lord, our Heavenly Father, who hast revealed Thyself to us 
in Thy holy Word, in Thy Providence and Thy dear Son, give me 
grace to realize more perfectly Thy unchanging goodness, that no 
trial may shake my firm trust and confidence in Thee. I ask it for 
Christ’s sake. Amen. 


caietinestap after tfje jFiftft SuttDap 

Henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of 
their mind, having the understanding darkened, . . . because 
of the blindness of their heart. — Ephes., iv., 17, 18. 

St. Paul is setting forth the completeness or 
“perfect stature” of a Christian life. He does it 
in two ways: first, by contrasting the pure ideal 
of human symmetry and strength with some of its 
frightful disfigurements, and then by a bright por¬ 
traiture of its absolute majesty and beauty. Tak¬ 
ing all he says together, you notice that he leaves 
nothing which belongs to humanity out of the 
account, because his Lord left nothing out when 
He took all humanity into His own Person; and 
because, in the comprehensiveness of his faith, 
every man and every woman must be made thereby 
a son or a daughter of God. “ Be a thorough speci¬ 
men of your human kind” — this is his doctrine — 
“by having in you the life of the Perfect One.” 

That comprehensiveness of the whole char¬ 
acter, that health of all the parts, being a growth 
and not a mechanism, will require three things: — 
first, a source beyond itself, an antecedent life, 

196 


WEDNESDAY AFTER THE FIFTH SUNDAY 197 

as every living thing in the universe does; then, 
a law of the life; and then, some visible fruit, — 
the source, God’s life in Christ; the law, a steady 
receiving and using of intellectual and spiritual 
light; the fruit, integrity, purity, and charity. 

Observe that the two principal words, “ under¬ 
standing” and “heart,” are terms of popular 
rather than philosophical language. The facts 
and the ideas of our Religion are from on high, 
but the speech is for the people for whom the 
Revelation is made. What is said is not said to 
any class, but to God’s children in their common 
humanity. Things are set before us as matters 
of intense, practical interest in our every-day life, 
which also pertain to realities within us which are 
mysterious in their nature and awful in their 
power. They are the subject-matter of the keen¬ 
est study when the mind turns inward upon itself, 
and yet they are none the less our working forces. 
In the long run, the profoundest truths are almost 
always the most practical. 

The end of the Christian religion is personal 
character. Character is salvation. Systems, the¬ 
ologies, creeds, liturgies, sacraments — all are 
for character. Unless this is produced, they fail. 
The outward law — God’s will — is not obscure, 
and it is the same for all. It is written in three 


198 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


Scriptures, — in conscience, in the biography of 
the race, and in a Book, — a triune message for 
the training of God’s family. Why, then, if the 
message is so plain, does it leave so many of us 
paltry specimens of “the perfect Humanity,” — 
self-willed and self-indulgent ? 

Christ tells us why. It is because those superior 
and spiritual realities, the Heavenly powers, can 
only lay hold of us and enter into us by an open 
receiving faculty within us. We can keep this 
open, or we can shut it up; and then we shall be 
heavenly minded or earthly minded, true or false, 
noble or mean, by a sure law. This organ of 
spiritual light is our endowment and our trust. 
We can manage it as we learn languages, do busi¬ 
ness, master sciences, run an aqueduct from the 
hills to the town, concentrate sunbeams in a glass; 
or we can let it alone, and then it will die out of 
us. When we come close to it, we find we can 
deal with it in a very simple way. High char¬ 
acter is not produced in the ratio of intellectual 
sharpness or mechanical skill. A clear-sighted 
“heart” gets on grandly with but a moderate 
“understanding.” Blindness is in the eyes; dark¬ 
ness is in the air. Men are blind, and then to 
them it is dark in the daylight. It is where there 
is “no vision” that the people perish. 


WEDNESDAY AFTER THE FIFTH SUNDAY 199 

This inward eyesight is at the command of your 
will. Everybody can have it. Shepherds in a 
Syrian pasture, fishermen on an inland lake; 
slaves bent double by their burden; young people, 
even the light-hearted; bankers, traders, women 
of even less wit than the woman of Samaria, are 
all known to have had this “vision,” this “stature 
of them that look upward and walk with God,” 
in its richest and sweetest maturity. Christ says 
it is got by keeping the heart open to God’s light 
of life; again He says, by keeping the inward man 
in the likeness of a child, — not the child’s weak¬ 
ness, but the child’s trustfulness, his teachable¬ 
ness, his open eyes, his uncalculating obedience 
of love. 

This puts the matter on the positive and brighter 
side. Our Lord puts it on the darker side, too. 
Buried light is the darkest kind of darkness. We 
go wrong, in our hands and feet, in doubt and 
despair, in willing sin, because sometime, some¬ 
where, there was a shutting of the eyes against 
the light of a Sun that never goes down. We 
wander, we sink, we sin, through “ignorance,” 
perhaps, but it is an ignorance that has in it the 
element of willingness to sin. The part in us 
which is least under our control is betrayed and 
prostituted by the part which is most under our 


200 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


control. High-minded and pure people get their 
vigorous and luminous characters by welcoming 
a sunshine poured from heaven in gifts of the 
Spirit: — “spiritual things are spiritually dis¬ 
cerned/’ assimilated, and so incarnated. The 
finest lives of man or woman will be when the 
finest forces have the freest play. You cannot 
be a spiritual creature without feeding on spiritual 
food. You cannot be lifted up where prayer lifts 
the soul, without praying. You cannot touch the 
high places of humanity except you “look unto 
the hills,” and accept with gladness those heavenly 
impulses and refreshments that come down from 
them. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they 
shall see God.” 

If, on the other hand, you get all astray as to 
the unseen realities of faith, if you are befogged 
with doubt, and perhaps a little proud of it, it 
does not follow that you have a sharper intellect 
than your neighbors, or that you are to look in that 
quarter for a cure; more likely you have neglected 
to exercise your spiritual sense, and to keep stains 
from your heart. Your heart was blind before 
your head was. You have shut off from your 
eyes one side of the marvelous and manifold and 
glorious ministry of light. Your stature must 
dwindle. For it is that side which opens con- 


WEDNESDAY AFTER THE FIFTH SUNDAY 201 

sciously towards the God and Father of Jesus 
Christ your Lord; towards Him to whom all the 
mysteries you stumble over in your life are the 
ordering of a personal and gracious plan; towards 
all the forces and ranks of heavenly or angelic 
life that live between Him and you. If you are 
belittled by it, if you miss something that the 
saints see, or find no comfort when some agony 
shakes you or bears you down, you are not to be 
surprised. Every soul among us sees just so 
much as he has inward eyes to see, takes what it 
is in him to receive, goes to his own place. 

There is a painting by a master of his art, of 
the porch of a vast and worshipful cathedral in 
southern Europe. Through a lofty archway there 
is a glimpse of the majesty and splendor within, 
centering in the lighted altar and uplifted cross; 
one almost hears the organ peal. On the massive 
doorstone outside is stretched the form of a tired 
peasant with rude face and heavy limbs, who has 
traveled in dust and homespun from his moun¬ 
tain hut to see the city. He has watched the 
tinsel pageant in the streets, and wondered at the 
grandeur of arches and palaces. He is fast asleep. 
Will he wake to look in and behold this temple- 
grandeur, and hear the resurrection hymn ? 

Who is this sleeper at the gateway of a divine 


202 


THE-DAYS OF LENT 


glory? Not only, you will see, — not only the 
dull goatherd of the Apennines — it is he that has 
eyes, and will not see. “ Awake, thou that sleep- 
est, and Christ shall give thee light.” 

Then life is to wake, not sleep, 

Rise and not rest, but press 
From earth’s level — where blindly creep 
Things perfected more or less — 

To the heaven’s height, far and steep; 

Where — amid what strifes and storms 
May wait the adventurous quest — 

Power is love, transports, transforms 
Who aspired from worst to best, 

Sought the soul’s world, spumed the worm’s. 

O Lord and Heavenly Father, grant me grace that I sleep not 
when Thou wouldest have me work or watch; give me eyes wide 
open to see Thy light and strength to do Thy will; let my heart 
in everything, however small, turn to Thee, that so Thy peace, 
which passes all understanding, may keep my heart: Through 
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 


CfmtsDap after tfje jFiftft ©uttDag 

The things of the Spirit of God ... are spiritually discerned. 
— i Cor., ii., 14. 

There are spiritual realities. How do we 
know it, or what is it to us when we do know it, 
if there is not an implanted faculty in us, capable 
of becoming conversant with those realities? Pos¬ 
sibly, if philosophy had completed its analysis, 
all that we mean by the distinct spiritual faculty 
would be found embraced under some of its 
names. It is enough that we know it by its effects, 
and that the whole resultant action of all its ele¬ 
ments is faith, — the New Testament faith. We 
may call it, then, the faith faculty. Things are 
shown to it not shown to the strongest brain. A 
knowledge breaks upon the earnest heart, waiting 
at the Master’s feet, which makes the wisdom of 
the world but folly. Rendering unto the under¬ 
standing the things of the understanding, we 
must render unto faith the things which are 
faith’s. 

After the name of Christ, faith is the chief term 
of the Bible; it is the correlate of that name. The 

203 


204 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


Word is forever calling on men to believe. Have 
faith! That is, exercise this faith-faculty. Use 
it, and by using it strengthen it. Open the soul. 
Let the light in. Let the prayer be: “Lord, I 
believe; help Thou mine unbelief.” 

It is very remarkable how constantly Christ 
addresses Himself to this inward vision. He 
evidently expects to do nothing without it. He 
does everything, says everything, that is possible 
to help it to open. The Healer of sightless men 
came to cure a worse blindness than any that 
shuts out the light of the sun. His errand on 
earth was not to restore a few palsied, sick, or 
buried bodies. Accordingly, before He put forth 
these special wonders, how often He looked in on 
the hearts about Him, to see if there was that in¬ 
dispensable readiness that would justify the 
miracle, or make it really beneficent. WLen 
the Syro-Phenician woman came pleading for her 
lunatic daughter, He let her cry long after Him 
till He had proved her: “It is not meet to take the 
children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs.” Yet 
when she had the lowliness and the trust to say: 
“Yea, Lord; yet the dogs under the table eat of 
the crumbs which fall from their Master’s table,” 
He spake that great benediction: “Great is thy 
faith; let it be unto thee even as thou wilt.” And 


THURSDAY AFTER THE FIFTH SUNDAY 205 

so, forever and forever, we shall be spiritually 
enriched just as much as we are willing and ready 
to be. 

Or take up any of the Saviour’s great sayings, 
— truths so vast as to link heaven and earth to¬ 
gether, — what are they but verbal sounds save 
as there is spiritual discernment? “I am the 
Resurrection and the Life,” — that unparalleled 
sentence, of more moment to each of us than all 
the wealth and all the knowledge and all the news 
circulating through all the civilization and so¬ 
cieties of the world! — over how many listless 
ears and indifferent minds it passes, as fruitless as 
a mourning mother’s repetition of the familiar 
name over the daughter that is dead! “Thou 
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart”: — 
what is it to us if our earnest hearts within us are 
not asking what we shall do, and Whom we shall 
love? Take the Beatitudes, one by one; and as 
their immortal promises fall on the outward sense, 
what does all this boundless Beatus , “Blessed,” 
signify, except there be some spiritual discern¬ 
ment to catch an image of the joy? 

It is a great hour for a man when he wakes up 
to this conviction that there is a world of truth 
which he is to receive, grow familiar with and 
live in, otherwise that through his mind or his 


206 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


bodily senses. It is a new being. It pours a new 
atmosphere over all the things we know by other 
senses. “If any man be in Christ,” — in Christ, 
— what does that mean, if not something far 
more than a mere external or even intellectual 
presence, a vital and inspiring ether, a flood of 
light? Whosoever is thus “in Christ” is a new 
creature. “Old things are passed away; behold, 
all things are become new.” There is a new prin¬ 
ciple of living, which is the love of God. Wonder¬ 
ful things are written of it by them that know. It 
makes men willing to suffer, willing to die. For 
“every one that loveth is born of God,” and can¬ 
not really die. “He that loveth dwelleth in God, 
and God in him.” “And hereby we know that 
He dwelleth in us, by the spirit which He hath 
given us.” 

The spiritual world is so much greater than this, 
that it is probable all outward things are only signs 
of its realities, expressions of its facts. Very 
likely there is no form in nature that has not its 
spiritual counterpart. To stop with the form or 
letter is like only noticing the grammar and rheto¬ 
ric of composition, regardless of what it conveys. 
We spell out our heavenly lesson under a higher 
and holier influence. God makes all life His 
interpreter. 


THURSDAY AFTER THE FIFTH SUNDAY 207 

“The spirit breathes upon the Word, 

And brings the truth to light.” 

That word does not profit which is not mixed 
with faith in them that hear it. 

We may wonder that this spiritual light, or 
faith-faculty, was not given to us perfect and 
mature. But compulsory belief would not be 
faith. Besides, no other desirable attainment is 
given to us on these terms, no knowledge of the 
stars or the earth. In the whole Divine Economy 
of man, we see the enlargement of his powers 
reckoned a greater good than the bare increase 
of his possessions. The wisdom to use, to assimi¬ 
late, and to set things in their relations, is more 
than the owning of them. Hence, by a law that 
cannot be broken, spiritual knowledge is not 
poured irresistibly into the mind. We have to 
reach out for it, and work towards it, and strive 
after it, and little by little get the jeeling of it along 
with the sight of it. It is for our own sake. It is 
that the truth may really be ours, of us, our life 
and not our furniture. 

All the world illustrates this Christian lesson. 
If the practised astronomer can see a star in the sky 
where others see only the field of blue; if the sailor 
sees a ship where the landsman sees no spot, — if 
thus, to a measurable keenness of vision, “the 


208 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


eye sees what it brings the power to see,” then, 
much more, as we lift up the eyes of the spirit in 
prayer and trust and charity, shall we behold the 
invisible, look on the things not seen and eternal, 
and, by purity of heart, “see God.” 

Hence we are responsible not only for what we 
do, but for what we see. More than we often 
think, these eyes of the soul are in our power. 
Say what we will of the obscurities of Revelation 
and the mysteries of Providence, truly spiritual 
and believing men and women go on reading both, 
deeper and deeper, clearer and clearer, all their 
lives, till at last — no longer through a glass 
darkly, the veil taken away — they see as they are 
seen, stand face to face with the Saviour they have 
so long and so trustingly followed, and have “open 
vision for the written Word.” If we do not be¬ 
hold the constellation of splendid truths that radi¬ 
ate their evangelic light from the Gospel, it is be¬ 
cause blindness is in the dim pupils of our eyes, 
unused or abused. Just as fast as we will let it, 
the day will dawn and the day-star arise in our 
hearts. By living out all the goodness we know, 
in the daily beauty of holiness, we shall behold 
life’s grand proportions. By walking with Christ, 
you shall wear His likeness. Nay — for He is a 
living Christ, — you shall have Him formed within 


THURSDAY AFTER THE FIFTH SUNDAY 209 

you; not only the hope, but the present possession 
of glory. 

When the faith-faculty is alive and at its prin¬ 
cipled work, it will reach out in its supremacy into 
all other parts of man and all the real interests of 
society, to hallow, guide, and bless them. It will 
not stay confined to the closet, nor the sanctuary, 
nor the Sabbath, where it began and where it still 
gets nourishment; but it will mingle itself in busi¬ 
ness and company, in bargains and visitings, in 
the merchant’s traffic and the student’s books, 
and the mechanic’s handicraft, and the farmer’s 
husbandry, and the Christian woman’s house¬ 
keeping, — making all these to be no more drudg¬ 
ery, but cheerful, dignified, and sacred services 
of religious love and joy. 

A man’s religion, then, is not a part of him, but 
is a quality of the whole of him. Having its own 
life-spring and stream, it fertilizes the whole field 
of his being. It makes his business safer, his 
scholarship wiser, his manhood manlier, his joy 
healthier, his strength stronger. It is the crown 
of his enterprise and the charm of his affections, 
the humility of his learning and the glory of his 
life. Faith works by love. And because it has 
the sight of things not seen and eternal, it is the 


210 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


splendor, the transfiguration, and the sanctity of 
things that are seen and temporal. 

Each little hill now holds its gift 
To my admiring eyes; 

Each mighty mountain doth uplift 
My spirit to the skies. 

All dark, all light, all tones divine, 

The gracious earth about, 

Their souls now send forth into mine, 

My soul to widen out. 

And every providence I hold 
A perfect gift of Thine, — 

Richer by this, a thousand-fold, 

Than if broad lands were mine. 

O Blessed Lord, grant me that spiritual discernment which is 
the very sword and shield of all who put their trust in Thee, that 
I may overlook nought that is good, nor be deceived by aught 
that is evil; which I beg for Thy mercy’s sake. Amen. 


jFtiDap after tfte JFiftft @>unOap 

The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was 
lost. — St. Luke, xix., io. 

Notice the title Christ chooses for Himself, His 
favorite name, — “The Son of Man is come.” 
The Son of God is not willing to be known only 
as of Heaven; His sinlessness, His miracles, His 
irresistible Word and Will prove Him to be Divine. 
But He is anxious that the people should know and 
feel that other nature in Him which is one with 
them. While He is Son of God with power, He 
is Son of Man with sympathy, with pity, with 
tenderness. The lost sheep in the thicket, or 
bleating among the rocks, wants the human hand 
and face and voice; it might be terrified at the 
aspect of an archangel. The Saviour must feel 
everything that a child of man and woman can feel, 
because it is that child He has come to save. In 
Him our Humanity must be more full, intense, 
vital, at every point, in fellow-feeling, in suffering, 
in joy, than in any man that ever lived; and it is. 

Salvation, being saved, is the grand necessity 
of sinners, and the shout of triumph of saints. 


211 


212 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


“What shall I do to be saved?” has been the 
anxious question of those in whom the new life 
has just been stirred. Manifestly we can know 
what it is to be saved only as we know what it is 
to be lost. 

Observe very particularly that Christ says of 
those who are lost, that they are lost already. He 
uses the past tense. He speaks of the state in 
which He finds men and women, just as they are 
in this life. Salvation and perdition are not wait¬ 
ing for us. We enter upon one or the other in the 
life that now is. Christ does His work of salva¬ 
tion in the living world, this side of the grave. 
It is in the paths and fields and homes of His 
human countrymen that He lives, teaches, heals, 
suffers, dies, and rises from the dead. The Eter¬ 
nal Shepherd goes where the lost sheep are. 

Hence, what those who believe and follow and 
love and obey Him have to expect is not only, and 
not first, a salvation hereafter, — that will be 
sure to come in its time and place, — but a pres¬ 
ent salvation. Too much, far too much, good 
Christians have thought of the heavenly life as a 
far-distant good, and of the holy and loving and 
saving Christ as a far-away Saviour. But is it 
not here that we want this life and power and love 
of Christ, — just where our common, real life is 


FRIDAY AFTER THE FIFTH SUNDAY 213 

lived, where we need daily strength for our labor, 
courage in our dangers, a shield against tempta¬ 
tion, companionship in our loneliness, and com¬ 
forting in our heart-ache and sorrow? A present 
salvation, a present Saviour, eternal life begun 
where we are, — that is what we need. And the 
Son of Man is come with it, to save you and me. 

With this bright link goes another: Christ’s 
salvation is a thing within us. They who have 
it do not carry it as a burden, or put it on as a 
covering or an ornament. It is interior, inwrought, 
a part of themselves, in the very heart of them. 
“With the heart man believeth.” You bear your 
salvation with you wherever you go. Your house¬ 
mates see it and feel it, and are the better for it. 
So do your neighbors; so do the men you deal with 
and the women you talk with; so do the poor, the 
neglected, the weak, the sick. Your faith has 
gone into your conduct, temper, manners. Your 
creed has gone into your life, enlarging, cleansing, 
and sweetening it. You are not obliged to change 
your pursuit or surroundings in order to be saved. 
Salvation is character, — present, spiritual, prac¬ 
tical. 

We have come, then, by the Master’s way to 
see what it is to be lost, and who are saved. Who 
are the lost but they who will not see and feel that 


214 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


they have here a Father’s House, for shelter, for 
nourishment, for fellowship, for cheer? I do not 
need to stray into the desert of Sahara, or the 
wilderness beyond Jordan, to be lost; if I am 
separated from my God by disbelief, by self-conceit, 
open or hidden vice, by living without prayers 
or sacraments, I am in the “far country” already, 

— lost, — unless I arise and go to my Father, and 
say to Him: “Father, I have sinned against heaven, 
and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be 
called Thy son.” The Son of Man has come to 
save me, if I will consent to be saved. 

And into what salvation ? An immediate peace 
with God, a conscience at rest, a steady hold on 
the spiritual world, a life of charity and justice 
among men, — a life of the saved like the life of 
the Saviour. What will be by and by we know 
only in part, — the glory and immortality, the 
City that has no need of sun or moon, the new 
Song, the Day whose light is the Face of the Lord, 

— that we shall know when we come to it. But 
nobility and purity of heart, consecration, un¬ 
selfish service to others, — what these are we 
know now, and these are heavenly. “I heard a 
loud voice saying in heaven: Now is come salva¬ 
tion and strength, and the kingdom of our God, 
and the power of His Christ.” 


FRIDAY AFTER THE FIFTH SUNDAY 215 

O wondrous fair Jerusalem, 

Shall I thy gates pass through ? 

Thy jubilations surely join, 

Thy lordly splendors view? 

O Crucified, O Glorified, 

Shall I Thy face behold, 

And join the ransomed as they sing 
Along the streets of gold ? 


O wondrous New Jersualem, 

From heaven thou art come down! 

On earth thy firm foundations are, 

Here weareth Christ His crown. 

Here for the symbols of His reign 
We rightful search begin; 

O loveliest Christ, O Christliest Love, 

Thy kingdom is within! 

O Lord, infinite in mercy as in power, who purifiest the depths 
of the human heart from sin, and makest it whiter than snow; I 
beseech Thee of Thy compassion to renew in my heart Thy Spirit 
of power and joy and freedom, that I may be enabled to find my 
place in Thy kingdom here, and in Thy heavenly City hereafter; 
and so abide in Thee and with Thee now and forever. Amen. 


^aturlrap after tbe jFift& SuttDag 

Go, and sin no more. — St. John, viii., n. 


These penitential days will soon end. But 
what would repentance be without forgiveness? 
It would be a hopeless agony. Only two kinds 
of persons can stand at last to be judged without 
alarm, — they that have not sinned — will any of 
us be there ? — and they who, having sinned and 
repented, are forgiven. 

“Go, and sin no more.” You can read the 
words superficially, as if they were only a single, 
commonplace direction, merging the “Go” in the 
“sin no more,” as we say coloquially “Go and 
see,” “Go and work.” But that is not all that is 
meant here. There are two distinct orders, sharp 
and clear. Saying “ Go,” Christ points the woman 
to her enslaved, sin-bound past. “Go” signifies 
acquittal and emancipation. “Out from that 
murky cloud, free from these merciless execu¬ 
tioners, penitent as I know your inmost heart to 
be, go into safety, peace, and the light of a forgiven 
soul.” 


216 


SATURDAY AFTER THE FIFTH SUNDAY 217 

In the second saying, “Sin no more,” our Lord 
turns the penitent offender from what has been 
to what must be. Repentance is not proved until 
it is tried. Pity never blotted out the indelible 
“Thou shalt not.” Henceforth there must be 
other purposes, other inclinations, a new life out 
of a new heart. Look up, and look on. Fill the 
rescued hours with purer longings, nobler aims, 
a holier conversation. 

What have we, then, in this New Testament 
occurrence and this message from a far-off place 
and time, but an uncovering of the very heart of 
the Saviour and His Gospel? That stricken, 
speechless Hebrew transgressor, before her Lord, 
is like ourselves; and, with whatever differences 
of race, speech, and species of sin, we are like her. 
Here is “truth” that we have got to meet, every 
one of us, face to face, some time or other. See 
it now, welcome it, own it, and it will make you 
“free.” 

Stripped of all that is doubtful, or circumstantial, 
or transient, we have, too, an answer to the ques¬ 
tions: How are we to be set right for all the past 
wrong-doing and wrong-feeling? How are we to 
go on rightly in spite of all these abused capac¬ 
ities, those wilful wanderings from the light and 
order and beauty of a righteous life? The one 


2 l8 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


only answer is the Master’s command and promise 
to the sinner’s human heart; first, forgiveness, 
then unfailing, victorious strength: “Go, and sin 
no more”; “In thy weakness my strength is made 
perfect.” 

There are those who say, and seem to believe, 
that forgiveness of sin cannot and ought not to be 
had; because, for all evil, Nature requires that we 
who did it shall pay just so much, or suffer just so 
much, in order to set it right. There are others 
who say that, whether forgiveness is possible or 
not, they do not want or ask for it, because they 
have committed no heinous sins. For what, then, 
was this impulse and longing to forgive and be 
forgiven put into the heart of our human nature? 
Somehow it got into the unceasing cry of the ages: 
“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who 
trespass against us.” And as to “setting right,” 
how will an unforgiving endurance set the wrong 
right till the hard heart is softened? And God 
cannot be a Father, a Father having a heart, with¬ 
out longing to pardon every sinning child He has. 

Humanity, penitent, is the Prodigal. Son, and 
longs to be forgiven. Not by our fellow-men, for 
not all our sins are against mankind. We have 
no power and no right to pardon ourselves. One 
Power, One Person, One Almighty Will, faithful 


SATURDAY AFTER THE FIFTH SUNDAY 219 

and just and merciful, can pardon and save us. 
It is not to one erring Jewess, it is to every sinning 
soul of all human kind that so royally and so 
tenderly that Heavenly Voice speaks: “Go, and 
sin no more. ,, 

Not more beautiful or luminous is the clearing 
of clouds after a storm in the outer landscape than 
in the mystic scenery of the soul. I stood one 
day on a steep mountain-top, having climbed it 
for a wider view, but was folded in by a dreary 
mist, shutting off the sight of everything but the 
rock at my side and the muddy path below me. 
Then a sudden wind from the west lifted and blew 
the thick gray mass aside; it vanished into the air 
and was gone. There was no dragging, doubting 
interval between dark and day; instantly the whole 
broad land of plains and orchards and rivers and 
fields of grain and homes of men lay open to the 
noon-day sun. When your drudgery of sin and 
self ends, your Lord’s forgiving words come 
quickly: 

“Forgetting those things which are behind, and 
reaching forth unto those things which are before, 
press forward.” Not to-morrow but to-day! Not 
yet among “angels and archangels and all the 
company of heaven,” but here and now make an 
obedient life your offering of praise. 


220 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


How cleanse a heart that is defiled? 

God may forgive the sin, 

But guilt is canker, and eats in, 

Is tempest, bringing shipwreck wild: 

Yet only as a little child 
Shall man His kingdom win. 

And if there were no Voice to say, 

“Go thou, and sin no more; 

Love, that forgives, can all restore, — 

Thou art made wholel” — could any stay 
Heart-bare, beneath truth’s probing ray, 

Unscathed by terrors sore? 

O Christ! the memory of our sin 
Thy healing love will hide; 

With Thee our souls in peace abide; 

In Thee heaven’s childhood we begin; 

Thy Kingdom we shall enter in, 

Not pure, but purified. 

11 Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden , and 1 
will rejresh you” These are Thy words, O Christ, and the sweet¬ 
ness of them doth encourage me, but the multitude of my sins 
weigh me down. What can I do but humbly confess and bewail 
them, and unceasingly entreat Thy favor and propitiation ? For¬ 
give them, O Lord, for the sake of Thy holy Name; save Thou my 
soul which Thou hast redeemed with Thy most precious blood. 
Behold, I resign myself into Thy hands; I commit myself unto 
Thy mercy, without which in Thy sight shall no man living be 
justified. Deal with me, I pray Thee, according to Thy goodness, 
not according to my wickedness. Burn up all my sins and offenses 
with the fire of Thy love; wash out the stains with Thy precious 
blood; purify, strengthen, enlighten my spirit, with all the powers 
thereof; that, being pardoned by Thy mercy and helped by Thy 
grace, I may ever hereafter cleave unto Thee with abundance of 
joy and triumph. Amen. 


©unDap in Lent 

This is the record, that God has given to us eternal life, and 
this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he 
that hath not the Son hath not life. — i John, v., ii, 12 . 

What it is that, to Christian people, makes the 
days of this week different from other days is that 
they pass vividly before us the special events in 
our Lord’s crowning work. One at a time, day 
by day, they lead us along to the two supreme 
facts — His Sacrifice and His Resurrection — 
which prove Him to be at once the Saviour of men 
and the Source of Everlasting Life. To Church 
people they make Holy Week so unworldly and 
yet so real, so solemn to our veneration and yet so 
tender to our sympathies, that they almost take us 
away, out of our commonplace routine, to Bethany, 
to the Mount of Olives, the Garden, the Judgment 
Hall, Calvary, and the Sepulcher. If these com¬ 
memorations were struck away, the year would be 
robbed of its richest glory; we wonder how any 
believer can fail to find the spring-time flat and 
tame without them. 

As we now enter the path which leads to the 


221 


222 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


sorrow of the Cross and the light of Easter Morn¬ 
ing, I think we may best serve the great end of our 
faith by looking from the outward signs of it to 
its seat in the personal soul, to that “life in His 
Son” which makes a fitting observance of Holy 
Week possible. “He that hath the Son hath life,” 
says St. John. 

What is it to “have” the Son of God? “To 
have” generally means possession. But here is 
no property, no exclusive rights. By the same 
right as yours, millions of souls can claim to 
“have” Christ. Slaves, beggars, Lazarus on his 
way to Abraham’s bosom, hewers of wood and 
drawers of water, saints and washers of saints’ 
feet, — all of them may have the Son of God. 
But to have Him cannot be merely to know about 
Him, to call ourselves by His name, or even to 
imitate some particulars of His conduct on earth. 
What is it, then ? 

It is to be conscious of belonging to Him in a 
mutual bond of affection and confidence, so be¬ 
longing to Him that a living influence pervades, 
attracts, moves, guides us, dwelling in our hearts 
because we have opened them to Him just as the 
fishermen of Galilee and the family at Bethany 
opened theirs, — in our hearts because we want 
Him there and ask Him to be there. For then 


SIXTH SUNDAY IN LENT 


223 


not only our outward ways and habits will be 
somewhat like His, but they will be so because we 
belong to Him and He belongs to us. There is 
no influence in the world like that of personality — 
living persons on one another. Personality not 
only parts and marks one person off from every 
other person in the world; but just as really and 
certainly it somehow binds persons together in 
such a way that one lives in and for and by another 
person. When that Divine Personal Presence of 
beauty and power is felt, not only will some of our 
actions resemble His in an outward way, but it 
will be as it always is when the lives of those who 
love each other enter into one another’s hearts by 
something deeper, sweeter, and dearer than any 
mere imitation. We shall know that without Him 
we can do nothing that is really good; that we get 
from Him here, where we live, in these houses, 
farms, streets, companies, studies, tradings, par¬ 
lors, and kitchens, that strength, courage, patience, 
and consoling which we need now, as well as 
what the Apostle calls the “hope of glory” here¬ 
after. This is the difference between having 
Christianity and having Christ. So taking the 
personal Friend and Saviour into our thankful 
affection and trust, everything we do will take 
Him with it. And this is to “have Christ.” 


224 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


Keep it carefully in mind that the very central 
and vital thing in our religion — the thing for 
which He died on the Cross — is that the Son of 
God is to you, to all men, a Life-Giver; more than 
a preceptor of knowledge learnt from Him by 
your mind; more than a Pattern that you can 
copy; more than a distant Shepherd calling to you 
from the far-off hills. Study that wondrous Par¬ 
able of the Vine and branches: “ Abide in me, and 
I in you”; the branch cannot bear of itself. The 
life of the living Vine, imparted, inspiring, is the 
life of every branch. The least one hath it if he 
have the Son of God. It is His gift. 

Lofty as this immortal privilege is, no child of 
God is left to plead, in excuse for not having it, 
that it is beyond his reach, impossible to his tem¬ 
perament, or impracticable in his environment. No 
littleness of property, no absence of opportunity, 
no obscurity of social position, no scanty intellec¬ 
tual culture, no hardship and no temptation, can 
bar any soul out of the riches, the liberty, and 
the joy of that better life. It cheers every dis¬ 
couragement. It makes the heaviest cross light. 
It levels all inequalities. He who left the splen¬ 
dor of the skies for the humiliations of earth 
draws no dividing line of rank or race or estate 
or knowledge. Not by purchase or title-deeds, 


SIXTH SUNDAY IN LENT 


225 


or loud appeals, or sign or attitude, but by the 
Spirit’s way, the heart’s way, straight down 
from on high and by obedient faith, “He that 
hath the Son hath life.” 

Is there no dividing-line, then, no separation 
of souls as there certainly is of paths? Finish the 
text: “He that hath not the Son of God hath not 
life.” The bad, barren branch is cut off, fit only 
for fire. The gift of life is offered, not forced. 
Anything is not really given until it is accepted. 
The Everlasting Life presents its solemn com¬ 
mand, “Thou shalt,” along with its gracious offer, 
“Whosoever will.” So the question rings through 
the chambers of the soul: “Where am I? Have 
I the Son of God for my life?” 

If the true and eternal life is in you, it will be 
manifest. It will have more and more of Him 
who is its only life; it will be more self-sacrificing, 
less self-indulgent; less anxious as to what is to be 
got, more concerned with what is to be given 
away, — by your example, your habits, manners, 
conversation, principles, — to the people who 
know and see you. In one way or another, this 
life of yours is entering into other lives, whether 
you choose or no. 

If it be said that this life in you which is not 
your life — an unseen gift from an unseen Christ 


226 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


— is a mystery that you cannot understand, so 
let it be. Standing on the mystery of an unsup¬ 
ported world, looking up at the million mysteries 
of the midnight sky, stumbling at every step over 
more mysteries than you have senses, dare you 
make your understanding the compass and limit 
of your possessions? No; be sure of more than 
you can see, and thankful for more than you can 
comprehend. Welcome the spiritual vision, and 
let the interpretation come when it will; very 
likely it will come when you live up to it. Rejoice 
in the heights where no foot can climb; above all, 
in that indwelling Life which is Life Eternal. 

Dear Christ, in this unworthy heart 
Dwell with celestial grace; 

Let the whole world be splendent with 
The glory of Thy face! 

While we below far upward press 
Our arduous, ardent way, 

Thy heavens, O Lord of Hosts, bring down, 

And here Thy power display! 

O merciful Lord, since it is not in man that walketh to direct 
his steps, uphold me by Thy helping hand. Stand by me in my 
weakness, and whisper to me when I am tempted: I am with thee: 
O thou of little faith, wherefore wilt thou fall? So let me abide 
under Thy shadow, in Thy light see light, and in Thy life have 
life: for Thy mercy’s sake. Amen. 


9@onOap after tfjc ^irtf) SuttDap 

And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with 
grave-clothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus 
saith unto them: Loose him, and let him go. — St. John, xi., 44. 

In the presence of a large company, a well- 
known neighbor, who has been dead four days, 
walks out of his sepulcher alive. Thousands of 
Christians, reading the account, think of nothing 
but the miracle. But, reading on, we come to 
something that is not miraculous. Jesus observes 
that the risen man is fettered and inconvenienced 
by the tight sepulchral bandages about his limbs 
and face. Instantly, this Lord of heaven and 
earth, this Wonder-wprker, whom the stormy 
winds and the sea obey, — naturally, as if no 
wondrous thing had been done, — took charitable 
thought for the man’s bodily comfort. 

This is His way, and He makes it the way of His 
Gospel. He is the Lord of the other world, and 
He is the Lord of this present world. His Sermon 
on the Mount is half of the devotion we owe to 
God, and half of the charity man owes to his 
brother-man. When His word of command stills 


227 


228 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


the tempest on the lake, His next word quiets His 
disciples’ alarm. No sooner has He come down 
from the splendors of His transfiguration, than 
He gives His tender concern to a miserably dis¬ 
tressed boy and his anxious father. Nothing with 
Him breaks apart His twofold ministry and com¬ 
mandment to the world: Love God: Love man. 

The bondsmen are all around us, with their 
napkins on, binding them slaves to hard con¬ 
ditions, to appetite or disease, to ignorance, to 
avarice, to superstition. The voice of the great 
Deliverer of Bethany can be heard even now: 
“Loose them, and let them go.” “Where the 
Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” 

You can work no miracle; you will open no 
closed grave; but you can take off some bandage 
from some son or daughter of God, some bandage 
on hand or foot, on heart or mind. You can 
loosen some chain of discouragement, or loneli¬ 
ness, or doubt, or despair. If you do that gladly 
for Him who wrought the miracle of redemption 
and salvation for you, you will certainly walk 
with Him at large, in that liberty with which He 
makes His children free. 

We are shown, further, by this incident, our 
Lord’s personal interest in every person before 
Him who needs Him. There was a crowd of 


MONDAY AFTER THE SIXTH SUNDAY 229 

people there that day, but the Son of man was 
thinking of one helpless brother-man. It was the 
whole human race that He would redeem, but 
one by one , and for each one as carefully as for 
ten thousand. At your baptism, the name given, 
the water poured, the signing of the cross, were 
for you alone, — you, the member of Christ; you, 
the child of God. We talk of numbers, of the 
multitude, of societies, of classes; Christ thinks 
of you, of your eternal life. When a timid woman 
touched Him with faith, a disciple said: “Master, 
the multitude throng Thee.” Jesus answered, 
“ Somebody hath touched me.” All the citizens 
of Jerusalem could not draw off the Saviour’s 
care for Lazarus, bound hand and foot before 
Him, or prevent Him from feeling the touch of 
one finger of faith in the pressing, swaying crowd. 

In all we do and say about religion, we are apt 
to notice what is on the surface, and to talk about 
those movements, occasions, ceremonies, which 
lie on the outside of religion rather than at the 
heart of it. But with strong and earnest believers, 
as soon as their life grows difficult, or distressing, 
or dangerous, or desolate, — as many lives do, 
and as many of our lives at any time may, — what 
comes to their lips, what is pressed out of them by 
pain, is not some sounding religious generality, 


230 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


or any thought of the bystanders, but the Name 
of One Person, the Name that is above every name, 
the Name most precious and dear of Him in Whom 
alone is all hope, all power, all pity, tenderness, 
pardon and peace, Who only hath immortality. 
The heart then calls to Him, cries to Him, as the 
penitent who could touch Him called, as the 
mourners at Bethany cried. In all the great 
scenes through which we are now following Him, 
His form, His face, singular and worshipful, throw 
all mortal figures into the background, the dark. 
“As in water face answereth to face, so the heart 
of man to man,” — the heart of the man or woman 
like you, weak and fearful, when the waves and 
storms go over it, turns to the infinitely deeper 
and tenderer heart of the Son of man. 

Thou present Christ! to Thee we speak; 

Weary and weak, 

Thy strength divine we struggling seek! 

Thou wilt attend 

To every faintest sigh we upward send; 

Thou talkest with our thoughts as friend with friend. 

The prayer of faith availeth much; 

Thou hearest such; 

Thy hand we in the darkness touch. 

Oh, not apart 

On some high throne stayest Thou, all-loving Heart! 

Helper in times of need we know Thou art. 


MONDAY AFTER THE SIXTH SUNDAY 231 


And when arise serener days, 

Whose air is praise, 

The song of thankfulness we raise 
On high shall be, 

Not that to some vast All we bend the knee, 

But that each soul has one sure Friend in Thee. 

O Blessed Lord, be Thou before to guide us, behind to guard 
us, around to shelter us, within to perfect us. Purge our eyes to 
discern and know Thee in every place, and to follow Thee faith¬ 
fully until we attain to see as Thou seest, to choose as Thou 
choosest; and having sought and found Thee, to hold fast to Thee, 
for ever and ever: For Thy love’s sake. Amen. 


Cuesoap after tfte ©tub ©tutDap 

For I delight in the law of God after the inward man; but I 
see another law in my members, warring against the law of my 
mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in 
my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me 
from the body of this death? 

I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. — Rom., vii., 22, 

23, 24, 25. 

There are two confessions here, — a confession 
of sin, and a confession of faith: the confession of 
sin pathetically humiliating; the confession of 
faith thankfully jubilant. We have now to do 
with the first. 

St. Paul acknowledges himself to be, at times, 
a slave. Roman slavery was as far as possible 
from being an honorable estate; its indignities were 
unspeakable, its cruelties frightful. It must be, 
in the figurative sense, a terrific and detestable 
tyranny that humbled the pride and subjugated 
the will of a proud, aggressive, independent spirit 
like that of Saul of Tarsus. Why does he tell the 
world of it? 

He knows that what is in him is in other men; 
his fight is their fight; his burden is their burden. 

232 


TUESDAY AFTER THE SIXTH SUNDAY 233 

He knows just how much law can do to make life 
complete and give the conscience peace; and he 
knows what it cannot do as a means of bringing 
man and God together. He tells us what it is 
to be a sinner in bondage, and what it is to have 
done with that bondage; what sin is, and the way 
out of it into conquest, liberty, and peace. This 
plenipotentiary of the Shepherd-King looks away, 
for the time, from the great wide world, from 
Gentile and Jew, to you and me. He says, “I.” 
His own personality breaks through the general 
language, the collective humanity, and strikes 
each responsible creature with the sympathy, and 
yet the faithfulness of a brother. The Epistle is 
not more for Romans than for Americans. St. 
Paul knew you by knowing himself. It is human 
nature that has to be born again, — you inherit 
it. Sin, the slave-holder, is in your appetites, 
inclinations, talk, studies, friendships, your open 
and secret life. The Law of God is broken by 
you. Who shall deliver you from that danger of 
death? And is your will firmly and prayerfully 
set to seek that deliverance ? 

We shall have a wrong notion of what sin is, if 
we think of a man’s or a woman’s character as 
made up of a collection of traits put together, each 
a separate thing that can be taken apart and treated 


234 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


by itself. That is no more true of your character 
than it is of a tree. We speak of sins in the plural, 
meaning much like what we mean by the detached 
branches or fruit of a tree. But what of the tree ? 
Is that good or bad? The first anxious concern 
about you, with the Searcher and Judger of hearts, 
is not what faults you have, but whose servant 
you are; not how many thorns or how many figs 
there are, but is it a fig-tree or a bramble-bush? 
Does the will of God reign in you, or your own 
will? Does the natural man prevail over the 
spiritual man, and bring him into captivity? or 
does the new man, which is the regenerate life 
born in the gracious baptism of water and the 
Holy Ghost, take effect and grow into the measure 
of the perfect stature of the freeman in Christ? 
Who is there that can help asking, “ Which rules 
in me?” 

We are brought then to the other confession, 
the confession of faith with its gratitude and joy. 
“I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” 
There can be no surprise that in the divine order 
of regeneration and redemption, a conviction of 
sin, in the individual Christian life, goes before a 
thorough renewal and a full salvation. No rigid 
scheme of inward exercises is laid down, because 
of the large liberty and diversity of operations with 


TUESDAY AFTER THE SIXTH SUNDAY 235 

which the Spirit works with our spirits; but sooner 
or later, by one way or another, the man who has 
been living for himself, or the woman for herself, 
must know how wrong, how terribly wrong they 
have been, must have a sense of escape, a con¬ 
sciousness of turning, a hating of sin, if they want 
to drink strong draughts of the Living Waters, if 
they would taste of deep peace, if they would 
stand on sure foundations, and understand the 
“new song” of Saints. 

And what song is that ? To the Church of the 
ages all along, to the Church that now is and the 
Church that shall ever be, it is: “Worthy is 
the Lamb that was slain! ” Only on a world lying 
in wickedness could there have been lifted up 
the awful mystery and glory of the Cross. Only 
by penitence can a human heart comprehend 
what a Saviour is. There can be no surprise that 
forty penitential days lead up to Holy Week, and 
all our wayward wanderings and pilgrimages of 
sorrow end at Calvary. Without the cry: I have 
sinned against heaven and, before Thee,” there 
can be no homeward travel of the soul; without 
self-reproach no pardon; without pardon no peace. 
Every other path, plan, device, hope, has been 
tried by the generations of thousands of years. 
“The world by wisdom knew not God,” knew 


236 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


not itself, knew not what it is to live, or what life 
is for. “This is life eternal, to know Thee the 
only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast 
sent.” “I thank God through Jesus Christ our 
Lord.” 

Three days hence a commemorating and con¬ 
fessing and sorrowful Church will behold the one 
awful sacrificial agony of all time and all the 
world. Shall it be to you personally only an 
annual outward ceremony of grief? What is our 
own part in that crucifying of the Son of God, our 
everlasting Friend? Does anything in your life, 
your conversation, temper, selfishness, vanity, 
envying, bitterness, wring from the Blessed Lips 
that patient “Father, forgive them”? 


I am as dross, and less than dross, 
Worthless as worthlessness can be: 

7 am so precious that the cross 
Darkened the universe for me! 

I am unfit, even from the dust, 

To kiss Thy snowy garment’s hem: 

I am so dear that Thou , though just , 
Wilt not despise me nor condemn ! 

Accounted am I as the least 
Of creatures valueless and mean: 

Yet Heaven's own joy shall be increased 
If e'er repentance wash me clean 1 


TUESDAY AFTER THE SIXTH SUNDAY 237 

Lord, I do fear that I shall go 
Where death and darkness wait for me: 

Lord, I believe , and therefore know 
I have eternal life in Thee l 

O Holy Spirit of God, Spirit of liberty, come to me, unworthy, 
and give me strength to break away from what I know to be 
wrong, and to turn with heart and soul and will to what I know 
to be right: Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 


meonestmp after tfje ©uitDap 

For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; 
but ye have received the Spirit of adoption whereby we cry, Abba, 
Father. — Rom., viii., 15. 

St. Paul puts in contrast with one another 
two kinds of religiousness, which in a shallow 
view are often confounded. One is “ fear,” which, 
if it is uppermost and has control, is a “bondage”; 
the other is filial affection, a joyous and holy union 
of gratitude and love, which is “ liberty.” If we 
search ourselves it will probably be found that, 
in each one of us, the degree of either is partly 
according to constitution and education, — more 
of a dread of danger in one, more choosing of what 
is right for its own sake and for Christ’s sake in 
another. But the moment that we think about 
them and compare them, we all alike confess that 
the latter is higher, nobler, and more Christlike 
than the former. 

If we were nearer to God, if our hearts were like 
His heart, and our lives were Christlike lives, fear 
would have no place. But, remember, alarm is 
not religion. If you think to be frightened out of 

238 


WEDNESDAY AFTER THE SIXTH SUNDAY 239 

your sins, that may be; but the place you are 
frightened into is not heaven. Just so far as any 
of us perform religious acts, repeat religious lan¬ 
guage, practise religious ceremonies, pray or sing 
or keep the Lord’s Day, because we are in the 
hands of a Master who can make us ache and 
smart, we have not found out what the Gospel is, 
what the Good News means. Moses and Aaron 
are our leaders, not Christ and the Holy Spirit; 
there is a lash over our heads and a dungeon door 
always in sight. We shall not be nobler, or purer, 
or more generous, or sweeter-hearted than the 
rule allows us to be. We are like men who keep 
their hands off of their neighbor’s property not 
because stealing is infamous, but because there 
is a prohibition and a penalty in the criminal code. 
Religion is between man and God; but it bears 
its fruit between man and man. Everything that 
our Lord did and said, from His birth to His resur¬ 
rection, shows that no man follows Him who does 
not try to be sincere and just and chaste and pa¬ 
tient and magnanimous with his fellow-men. 
Revelation reveals the fact that the kingdom of 
heaven belongs to this world as much as with the 
other. See what different kinds of manhood and 
womanhood you will have side by side in your 
houses, your business, and all the contacts and 


240 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


commerce of Society, according as the one or the 
other spirit prevails, — the spirit of “ bondage to 
fear,” or “the Spirit of adoption whereby we cry, 
Abba, Father.” 

The truth is, to a far greater extent than most 
of us are aware, that the social spirit, which is a 
beautiful thing in itself, is a spirit of timid and 
anxious apprehension. We buy and sell, we spend 
and save, we dress and entertain, we serve or are 
served, in fear of one another. We do it, to be sure, 
under certain moral names, such as honesty, forbear¬ 
ance, good temper, purity; but it is a question — 
very pertinent to Lent — whether we respect and 
exemplify these traits as moral principles, or only 
as expedient customs. If there is no underlying 
principle as a motive, then most of our decent 
conduct is influenced by one or another kind of 
fear. We are afraid of many masters, — of 
fashions which are without authority, of a public 
opinion which is often without reason, of a dicta¬ 
tion for which nobody is responsible, of being 
cheated, criticised, ridiculed, or socially exiled; of 
accident, of disease; and not a few are all their 
lifetime subject to bondage through the fear of 
death. And this master, fear, is not a noble 
master. It quickens no affection, multiplies no 
happiness, comforts no sorrow, forgives no sin. 


WEDNESDAY AFTER THE SIXTH SUNDAY 241 

It is the deadly enemy of courage, of independence, 
of hope and peace and freedom. “Perfect love” 
casteth it out. 

Some necessary things, no doubt, are done from 
dread or alarm, or else no such feeling would have 
been implanted among the provisions of our na¬ 
ture. But just so far as it is concerned for self, 
it is the spring of no upward movement, the mother 
of no immortal offspring; the framer of no lofty 
ideals, the gladness of no gospel, the power of no 
spiritual salvation. The love of man and the love 
of God are not in it. It never cries, “Abba, 
Father”; for that oriental, untranslatable “abba” 
is a term of the tenderest endearment. 

To be sure, it is my duty to “fear God, and keep 
His commandments,” — for in Bible language that 
“fear” means reverence, — but to fear Him be¬ 
cause He is Almighty Goodness and Truth, not 
because He is an almighty sheriff or avenger. I 
am to be afraid to break His commandments be¬ 
cause they are “holy, just and good,” not because 
behind them there is a celestial police. Self- 
interest and comfort and popularity, whip and 
fine, are not the guardians that keep the gate 
of Paradise. Their fear is cowardice. They 
are the children of the bondwoman, not of the 
free; and all their reluctant and prudent and 


242 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


enforced restraints, however salutary, are a 
“bondage.” 

The Lord of Life, by His cross, has lifted the 
world up — lifted you up, if you will let Him — 
to a new and higher plane of being. You often 
hear it said that Christ came to reform conduct. 
That is true; but he reforms conduct by changing 
the spring and source out of which conduct comes. 
This change is momentous and radical. It is the 
change from compulsion to attraction, from law 
to love, from fear to faith and hope, from slavery 
to freedom. This is the grandeur and joy of our 
place in His Family. In this larger air and 
brighter light we live. We are sons and daughters 
of God. How shall we be filial children, not by 
spur or scourge or chain, but by a child’s will¬ 
ing, trustful, yielding affection? How shall we 
be upright and gentle and brave and pure with 
one another? You find it hard to love and 
trust a neighbor of whom you are afraid. Rise 
and mount to this loftier fellowship, this better 
way. 

There is a revelation and a promise. “The 
law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made 
me free from the law of sin and death.” That is 
the revelation. “In the glory that shall be re¬ 
vealed, the creature itself shall be delivered from 


WEDNESDAY AFTER THE SIXTH SUNDAY 243 


the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty 
of the children of God.” This is the promise. 

Freedom’s secret wilt thou know? — 

Counsel not with flesh and blood; 

Loiter not for cloak or food; 

Right thou feelest, rush to do. 

He that feeds men serveth few; 

He serves all who dares be true. 

O God, the Helper and Strengthener of those who put their 
trust in Thee, free me, I pray Thee, from every bondage of body 
or soul. Give me grace to dare to be true in all things; not con¬ 
senting to any evil custom because it prevails; not being deceived 
by vain shows, whether from without or within; not fearing any¬ 
thing but to come short of that glorious liberty which Thou givest 
to all who seek it in Thy service, O blessed Lord and Master: To 
whom with the Father and the Comforter, be glory and honor 
and thanksgiving, world without end. Amen. 


CbursDap after tfte ©unDap 

Give us this day our daily bread. — St. Matt., vi., n. 


The Gospel for the First Sunday in Lent sent 
out to us and to all Christian people its warnings 
at the beginning of the forty days’ warfare with 
sin, with the appetites of the flesh, the seductions 
of the world, the secret instigations of the devil. 
It did this by showing us the scene of our Lord’s 
Lent of temptation in the wilderness and the city. 

No doubt that scene seemed to lie far off beyond 
our common life, in what we call the supernatural 
world. But if we have read the Bible and kept 
Lent to much purpose, we have learnt that the 
natural world and the supernatural are not so far 
apart as our poor language and dim senses are apt 
to represent them. In fact, it is not certain that 
they are two at all, any more than the spirit and 
the body are two, the unseen and the visible parts 
of us, the immaterial and the material. 

We are now coming to our Lord’s final conflict 
and victory. We hear a voice that says to us, 
“We have not a High Priest that cannot be 
touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was 

244 


THURSDAY AFTER THE SIXTH SUNDAY 245 

tempted in all points like as we are,” and with it 
the promise that He “will not suffer us to be 
tempted above that we are able.” Keeping this 
in mind, on this day which commemorates the 
institution of the Lord’s Supper, let us think what 
is meant by that familiar petition: “Give us this 
day our daily bread.” 

In its broadest interpretation, they who pray 
it — you if you really pray it — make two con¬ 
fessions, which are a part of our religion: one that 
our life depends on a constant supply coming from 
without ourselves; and the other, that the gift 
comes from a personal Giver. After teaching 
Christendom the three primal verities of the 
Christian creed and the Christian life, — namely, 
God the Father; an eternal world above us; a 
divinely ordered human family here on the earth; 
— Christ thinks of our weakness, of each one of 
us as pitiful without parental care, points us to a 
harvest and granaries in heaven, and institutes 
for us a daily bread of heavenly food. So His 
disciples become “partakers of His life”; whoso 
“receiveth” Him “hath life eternal.” We are to 
eat His flesh and drink His blood, the true, strong 
figure says. 

In one luminous passage in the biography of 
Jesus Christ, the meaning of this mystical relation 


246 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


of the hunger of the outer to that of the inner man, 
of the bread that sustains our mortal life here and 
the Bread of Life which in Himself comes down 
from heaven, is opened and made plain to us. At 
the outset of His public ministry, as He comes up 
from His Lenten fast and solitude in the wilderness, 
in that hour when the dawn of prophetic ages was 
breaking into the daylight of the world’s salvation, 
the Adversary must arrest and overcome Him — 
if he can. He first approaches the outer, visible 
part of “the man Christ Jesus” — His body. 
After fasting forty days and nights He was “an¬ 
hungered.” If our Lord had avoided this assault 
on His bodily weakness, He would have been 
imperfect as a Pattern, incomplete as a Saviour. 
How then could our fainting and stumbling senses 
look to Him, and cry to Him as “tempted in all 
points like as we are, yet without sin”? There 
are groveling and struggling and sinking multi¬ 
tudes the world over, — they are all around us, — 
to whom the temptations which followed this, to 
the pride and ambition of the mind, would give 
far less help than this one, less courage, less blessed 
protection. The bodily hunger is to them the 
interpreter, the expounder, the monitor, of the 
hungry heart: “Thou shalt not live by daily bread 
alone.” 


THURSDAY AFTER THE SIXTH SUNDAY 247 

Presently after, we are lifted into a loftier vision 
of the power and triumph of the spiritual life. It 
is in one of those eight Beatitudes, opening that 
Sermon which told men that the new age t>f the 
world’s history had come. A new fountain of 
blessedness, contentment, and peace was unsealed, 
never heard of, never thought of, never dreamed of 
before. “ Blessed are they that hunger after 
righteousness,” a longing that shall be to the 
soul what man’s craving for food is to his faint¬ 
ing frame. Why “blessed,” then? Not because 
hunger is a praiseworthy or a comfortable or a 
religious act in itself. Women and children not 
very far from your own door can tell you they 
know better than that! Pray on, pray that God 
will give you, and that He will give them, “this 
day our daily bread”; lest you and they lose heart 
and hope and faith, and are tempted into that 
other poverty which no bread nor meat can feed. 
Your blessedness then will be that, so hungering 
after righteousness, on the sure strength of the 
Lord’s own promise, in His own time and way, at 
His own Table, with His own hand, you shall “be 
filled.” 

Consider also that miracle of the feeding of the 
five thousand on the mountain-side, where the pro¬ 
found secret of Christ’s spiritual union with His 


248 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


disciples is again made manifest in the same figure 
of the hunger and the bread. Without its graphic 
reality how could we ever have known these central 
truths of His coming — His compassion, His un¬ 
bought bounty, the tenderness of His salvation? 
The hungry “multitude need not depart”; “Give 
ye them to eat”; “Bring the small provision unto 
me.” Then see the abundant supply out of the 
abundant storehouse, — “They took of the frag¬ 
ments that remained twelve baskets full!” The 
glorious, mystical, eucharistic truth held in the 
heart of the pilgrim Church from the beginning — 
that the disciple’s union with Christ is the bond 
and the power of the life everlasting! “The 
bread of God is He who cometh down from heaven, 
and giveth life unto the world.” “Iam the Bread 
of Life; he that cometh to me shall never hunger.” 

Take in by these luminous inspirations the full, 
deep, tender significance of your daily petition, 
as never before: “To our hunger — to the world’s 
hunger — O Lord, give the heavenly, the Living 
Bread!” Like the Living Water, the Bread is at 
hand for the hand that will take it: “Whosoever 
will.” The Bread is “daily bread,” — bread for 
these mortal bodies just as much as for these undy¬ 
ing souls, living and believing in Him who feeds 
us with Himself. 


THURSDAY AFTER THE SIXTH SUNDAY 249 

Thou hast for us a Table spread, 

And we are fed 

With costlier than angel’s bread, — 

Bread from that Com of Wheat which once did die 

To yield for man eternally supply, — 

Wine 

Pressed from the clusters of the Living Vine: 

This Thou preparest for these guests of Thine. 

And whom dost Thou invite, 

Saying, “Take, eat, and drink”? 

Who may be counted worthy in Thy sight, 

Nor from Thy bidding shrink — 

The humble or the great ? 

“All who do feel their sinfulness and woe, 

Be they of high or mean estate, 

Are welcome, — I stoop low. 

Stay! 

Wilt thou not also be my guest to-day?” 

O Thou, the Bread of Life coming down from heaven, ever¬ 
more give us this Bread; give us Thyself. “Blessed,” saidst 
Thou, “is he that eateth bread in the kingdom of God”: grant 
me so to eat, — with Thee here in a mystery; with Thee hereafter 
face to Face. Help me to realize more and more the blessedness 
of communion with Thee, and through Thee with the Father, in 
the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 


<SooD JFriOap 


I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath 
sent me. — St. John, v., 30. 

This short saying of our Lord to His disciples 
tells us what we need now most to know and to 
feel. It opens to us all the great meaning of Good 
Friday, of Holy Week, and the secret of every 
Christian life, of its power and its peace. 

Our Lord says, “I seek not mine own will.” 
Notice the exact word He uses. He does not say 
that He has no will of His own, or that He does 
not will to do something that He does, on earth or 
in heaven. He says, “I seek not mine own will”: 
my will is not first; I do not seek it or think of it as 
my object in life or death; I cannot take it apart 
or separate it from the Father. “ Whatsoever He 
seeth the Father do, that doeth the Son likewise.” 
“I delight to do it, for Thy law is in my heart.” 

As with the Master, so with the disciple. Who¬ 
ever follows Christ must follow Him with his will; 
he chooses and wills to follow Him. Open your 
New Testament: the first invitation, at the open 
door of the Kingdom of the New Life, strikes on 

250 


GOOD FRIDAY 


251 


the heart: “Whosoever will, let him come.” 
Christ’s question to the weak and prostrate form 
at the fountain of Bethesda is really the Gospel 
appeal to all disordered and helpless humanity 
everywhere: “Wiliest thou to be made whole?” 

Certainly that question must be putting itself to 
us at this time with some keen, deep anxiety. How 
shall the wandering, vacillating life in your soul 
be made steadfast as the life of the oak in the 
forest, or the healthy body? how shall the flutter¬ 
ing spasm settle into an even breathing in and 
out of the vital air of the Spirit? how shall the 
flickering flame burn and shine — a lamp that 
never goes out? 

The deep answer comes from the lips that prayed, 
as last night in the Garden, “Nevertheless, not 
as I will, but as Thou wilt.” Even the compari¬ 
sons just now used may tell us what we want to 
know, — the tree, the body, the breath of the 
body, the lamp. No one of them makes its own 
life. The mountain oak is rooted and secure by 
the unchanging sun in the sky, warming and re¬ 
plenishing a hidden vitality within it. Bodies are 
strong only as they are fed from beyond them¬ 
selves. Breath is but the figure for spirit: “The 
wind bloweth, so is everyone that is born of the 
Spirit” and grows thereby. We have lamps of 


252 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


many radiances and powers, but every light on 
land or sea is kindled first at one fountain in the 
heavens, which no man’s hand kindles or feeds. 

You know then where to go — to Him who 
is the Life and the Light, the one only Life, the 
one only Sun. By regeneration is the gift of the 
Holy Ghost, Christ’s life flowing into the dis¬ 
ciple’s life, a stream that never slackens unless it 
is refused. The Bread of Life, in the Sacrament, 
renews and nourishes a perpetual union with 
Christ, because you will to take it. So every 
exercise of faith strengthens the willing power, 
so prayer, reading of the Word, self-denial, every 
act of charity, every taking up of a cross. The 
original energy is not in us; it cometh down 
whence the Saviour comes. We have it as we are 
willing to take it. 

To-day — when we see the Saviour stretched 
on the Cross, with the thorns, the dripping blood, 
the paleness of death, the gathering darkness over 
the land till the ninth hour, and hear the cry, “It 
is finished!” — to-day comes a new revelation of 
that power of the will. Christ declares the glori¬ 
ous wonder of His condescending love, the secret 
of His Divine royalty over the world: “I came 
down from heaven not to seek mine own Will.” 
The mightiest Will ever seen at work among men, 


GOOD FRIDAY 


2 53 


mightiest in its manifestation before them, mighti¬ 
est in its permanent authority, surrenders itself 
willingly to a superior command. In the mystery 
of that lowly submission is the explanation of two 
facts most remarkable in the history of mankind, 
— the fact that voluntary self-surrender for the 
sake of Truth and Right and Love is always the 
real triumph; and the fact that the will of man wins 
its perfect satisfaction only when it wills to be one 
with the Will of God. 

How is it with two human hearts — your own 
and some other? They unite when their wills 
agree, love being the mediator. I am reconciled 
to my friend when his will is mine, and mine is 
his: we are aliens no more. Yet my will, guiding 
my conduct, is no less mine because I have made 
it harmonious with my Lord’s will, — no less inde¬ 
pendent, no less free. This is the perfection of 
faith, the liberty of obedience, the light burden, 
the lover’s joy, the victory that overcomes the 
bondage of the world. Prophecy and Gospel, 
Cross and Eucharist, repeat the tidings that 
gladden the earth: “Lo, I come to do Thy will, O 
my God.” 

We draw nigh to the Crucifixion. We climb 
the Mount of Sacrifice. At last the one glorious 
submission, the one redeeming action — Christ’s 


254 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


supreme, victorious seeking of His Father’s Will! 
You dwell on the sorrowful particulars very ten¬ 
derly, you read them over in your Gospel, you 
sing them in subdued strains in hymn and tene- 
brae; — yet remember that beneath and beyond 
all these signs of sorrow — deeper, larger, loftier 
— is the mighty triumph of the Will of God. 

It is a sacrifice and a triumph in which we, every 
one, you and I, unworthy as we are, can in our 
little measure have a share. We need not travel 
to a far-off Calvary. In house and market, in 
family and society, in labor and pleasure, in 
temper and talk, in charity and patient pain, while 
we worship Him we may be “ crucified with 
Christ.” If we really believe in Him, we shall be. 
And if we suffer with Him we shall also be glorified 
with Him. 

By Thine anguish cleanse my soul; 

By Thy Passion make me whole; 

Weak and helpless on the Tree, 

Thou did’st gain a victory; 

Weak and helpless as I lie, 

Thou canst triumph, sin can die. 

Search me through and nothing spare, 

Bum the sin out that is there; 

All that is of Thine and Thee 
Quicken into energy; 

Let Thy love enlarge my heart, 

Deepen, soften every part. 


GOOD FRIDAY 


255 


In the silence deep and still, 

Bind me closer to Thy Will; 

Let my spirit grow more clear, 

Heavenly whispers let me hear; 

Let the veil become more thin, 

And the glory pierce within! 

O God of penitents, O Saviour of sinners; let thy mercy be 
greater than my offenses; 

Blot them out in the abundance of Thy compassion; pardon 
what is past, and make holy what shall be. 

Assist me with Thy grace faithfully to do Thy Will, and the 
Will of Him that sent Thee: 

Strengthen me to crucify the beginnings of evil; and carefully 
to nourish every germ of good that Thou givest me by Thy Holy 
Spirit. 

Let my chief hunger be for righteousness; that I may be filled 
with the Bread of heaven. 

Dwell in my heart, and cleanse my thoughts and desires; that 
being pure in heart I may see God. 

Bless and quicken all Thy children, whether at home or in a 
far country; give joy to the faithful, and bring back the wandering. 

And to Thee be praise and thanksgiving, glory and honor, 
might and majesty, for ever and for ever. Amen. 


(Easter <Etien 


O Grave, where is thy victory? 

Thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord 
Jesus Christ. — i Cor., xv., 55, 57. 

Nothing extinguishes the human interest in 
what is to come after death. It is in humanity, 
belongs to it, is coeval with it. In the earnest 
soul’s private experience the cry for pardon and 
the cry for life go up together, and their united 
appeal is, “ Who shall deliver me from the body of 
this death?” 

Christ is the answer, Christ dying and risen, 
Christ crucified and living. The spiritual life 
does not stop and begin again. The other exist¬ 
ence does not supervene upon this one, nor hang 
upon it in a mere line of succession; and indeed it 
is only an accommodation of speech that we speak 
of it as “ another.” What Christ reveals and 
declares is the unity and eternity of the new 
creature “in Him.” By the Incarnation and 
Mediation God’s life and man’s life are made one 
at once and always. The Lord began His minis¬ 
try by declaring “The Kingdom of Heaven is at 

256 


EASTER EVEN 


257 


hand.” It had come in Him. It was on the 
earth. The true tabernacle of God, which the 
Lord hath pitched, is with men, and in men. To 
know this, and to know Him, is (not is to be by 
and by, but is) eternal life. 

No doubt it is natural for the Bible, which is the 
Book of Humanity as well as the Book of God, 
just as it is natural for us men, to make much of 
the circumstance of death. In many ways it is 
an extraordinary occurrence, and its effect on our 
relations, interests, occupations, sources of enjoy¬ 
ment and suffering, is extraordinary. It is almost 
as difficult not to speak of death as the end of life, 
or of heaven as lying beyond it, as to escape speak¬ 
ing of the sun as rising and setting. We continue 
to talk of things as they look. Reflection corrects 
the fallacy. There are whole passages in the 
teachings of Christ and the Apostles where this 
popular phraseology is dropped. Language is 
used literally and not figuratively, and we are 
lifted to a higher plane both of speech and thought. 
To have the life of Christ is to live eternally. To 
be without Him is to be dead. Believe, and live; 
disbelieve and bring forth the fruits of disbelief, 
and you die. “Whosoever liveth and believeth 
in me shall never die.” Christ “hath abolished 
death.” 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


258 

We are never happy — with any strong, satis¬ 
fying joy — till the element of evil has gone out 
of us; and it goes out of any breast only by the 
discipline of grief, by suffering, by a cross. There 
is always something in us that has to be fought 
against, denied, put down, crucified and killed 
before we are ready to live righteously, sweetly, 
wisely. We all have in this way to die before we 
live. No grand characters are built up without 
some battling with an inward foe. Penitence, if 
it is sincere, is the first movement of the life of 
God in the soul; but penitence is painful, the hard 
dying of the old, bad life. When you say out of 
your shamed inmost soul, “God be merciful to me 
a sinner!” it is a sad strain, to be sure, but it is the 
first note in a music which swells gradually into 
the anthem of an endless thanksgiving. 

It follows that we are not, if we would be en¬ 
lightened and comprehensive interpreters, to re¬ 
strict our notions of immortality to a sense of mere 
duration or of futurity. Death, evangelically, is 
sin in its last spiritual outcome. Life is the state 
of the soul when goodness prospers and prevails, 
unhurt, unsubdued, by any prince or slave of 
iniquity. Saints die and are buried; but, take 
away from death all fear, all sense of loss, all 
thought of sundered friendships, of the cessation 


EASTER EVEN 


259 


of conscious being, of all the mournful funeral 
accompaniments, and it is no more what men mean 
by death. It is an embarkation for a land we 
have not seen, but of which we have heard much, 
and from which a Friend, the best of all the friends 
we have, has come like the dayspring from on 
high, to visit us. We know not what we shall be, 
“but we know that when He shall appear, we shall 
be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.” The 
grave is left, but it is transfigured. 

As the two lives, spiritual and natural, go on 
together, and are wrought each into each, why 
should we not believe that, where Christ is received, 
the inner man, spaced and outlined here by the 
bodily organization, is gradually prepared for its 
celestial exercises and experiences ? that the organs 
and functions which are so necessary and useful 
here, will undergo a transfiguration fitting them 
to their supernatural environment and occasions? 
that only that which is superfluous falls off, and 
all that is essential remains? Let us not be par¬ 
simonious or grudging in our belief. Greater 
changes take place than the etherialization of the 
mortal frame. The Incarnation teaches us won¬ 
derful things about the body, and raises it to 
unspeakable possibilities of dignity and beauty. 
The moral life already modifies and conforms it. 


26 o 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


He who could take our flesh can, when He lives 
in us, make of it what He will. 

No matter, then, at what age of his life a Chris¬ 
tian dies. He goes to be perfected, set free. The 
survivors shut the door behind him, and grieve 
and weep; but there was a cause for his going, and 
God knows what it is, and probably you will know. 
He who has given us so much will give us more. 
The fear of death is a weakness of faith. What 
kind of an immortal is daily fashioning within us ? 
— that is our question. Into what sort of a living 
image is our daily life carving us? How shall 
we look when the outer integuments and wrappings 
fall off from us? Is the life we are living worth 
perpetuating ? If it is, then it is not possible that 
it* should be “holden” of any grave in earth. 
“ Death is swallowed up in victory.” 

In sun and rain a world is growing green, 

On half the trees quick buds are seen 

Where fast-shut buds have been: 

In sun and rain God’s Acre stretches green, 

Its harvest quick, though still unseen; 

For there the Life hath been. 

If Christ hath died His brethren well may die, 

Sing in the gate of death, lay by 

This life without a sigh: 

For Christ hath died, and good it is to die, 


EASTER EVEN 


261 


To sleep whenso He lays us by, 

Then wake without a sigh. 

O Lord Jesus, who wast pleased to live for us, make us right¬ 
eous; to die for us, make us thankful; to rise again for us, make 
us glorious. 

O Thou whose light enlightens the tomb, in Thy light let us see 
light. 

By faith in Thee, let us rise out of sin and sorrow into spiritual 
power and life. 

Bring our wills into harmony with Thy will, that we may give 
this earth more of the look and mind of heaven. 

Let the protection of Thy providence keep danger from our 
bodies, and evil thoughts from our souls. 

Remember for good all who have a claim on us by kinship, or 
by having done us a kindness. 

Bless all who pray for us, all for whom we have promised to 
pray; and teach the prayerless to pray. 

Remember munificent hands to re-fill them, and generous hearts 
to spiritualize them. 

Raise up any who are overthrown by frailty, and perfect Thy 
strength in their weakness. 

Comfort the hearts of the bereaved; and with the joy of Thy 
presence satisfy the lonely. 

Let perpetual light be upon the souls of our beloved ones gone 
home to Thee; and help us to follow their good examples. 

When our day is far spent, lighten Thou our darkness; and 
give us songs in the night. 

Draw nigh to us at the last; be our Strength and Friend when 
strength and friendship fail us. 

Thou who knowest whence we came, we trust Thee for whither 
we shall go. 

Teach us to do Thy will here; and Thy will be done with us 
hereafter. 


262 


THE DAYS OF LENT 


For neither on earth nor in heaven can aught be better for us, 
wiser, tenderer, more merciful, than Thy perfect will, O God; 

Unto whom be glory, honor, praise, might, majesty and do¬ 
minion, world without end. Amen. 


INDEX TO POETRY 


PAGE 

Christina G. Rossetti ....... 6 

Christina G. Rossetti . . . . . . . n 

T. B. Pollock ........ 17 

John Worden ......... 23 

Frances Ridley Havergal ....... 29 

George Macdonald ........ 35 

George Herbert . . . . . . . .41 

John Worden ........ 45 

Susan Coolidge ........ 52 

Lucy Larcom ......... 56 

Frances Ridley Havergal . . . . . . .61 

George Macdonald ........ 67 

Lucy Larcom ......... 73 

Alice Cary ..78 

Alice Cary ......... 84 

M. Elizabeth Crousa, first stanza ..... 89 

George Macdonald, second and third stanzas ... 89 

Christina G. Rossetti ....... 95 

Unidentified ......... 99 

B. M. .......... 105 

Florence Evelyn Pratt . . . . . . .110 

Horatius Bonar . . . . . . . .116 

Alice Cary ......... 120 

George Macdonald . . . . . . . .126 

Christina G. Rossetti.132 

Alice Caiy ......... 140 

Richard G. Trench ........ 147 

Phoebe Cary . 151 

Christina G. Rossetti . . . . . . 159 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning.171 

Phoebe Cary . 175 


263 












264 


INDEX TO POETRY 


PAGE 


Phoebe Cary 
George Macdonald 
Owen Meredith 
Frances Ridley Havergal 
Robert Browning 
George Macdonald . 
Denis Whitman, 

Lucy Larcom 
Denis Wortman 
Lucy Larcom . 

Phoebe Cary 
Ralph Waldo Emerson 
Anna E. Hamilton 
Caroline M. Noel 
Christina G. Rossetti 


181 

186 

191 

195 

202 

210 

215 

220 

226 

230 

236 

243 

249 

254 

260 













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